MIT: Eulerian Video Magnification
February 28th, 2013Update: Upload Your Own Videos
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September 11 Television Archive
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I’d like to feed some of the 9/11 footage through this.
Via: MIT News:
At this summer’s Siggraph — the premier computer-graphics conference — researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present new software that amplifies variations in successive frames of video that are imperceptible to the naked eye. So, for instance, the software makes it possible to actually “see” someone’s pulse, as the skin reddens and pales with the flow of blood, and it can exaggerate tiny motions, making visible the vibrations of individual guitar strings or the breathing of a swaddled infant in a neonatal intensive care unit.
Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry
February 28th, 2013It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this amounts to a “nothing-to-see-here” assessment of what is happening.
Consider what William Binney and Mark Klein have said and written, and what NSA is building, and then tell me if you believe that only three dozen people have access to the domestic intercepts. Come on. Get real.
This RAGTIME compartment, that Ambinder and Grady are describing in Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, probably exists specifically as a limited hangout for oversight purposes, and as chum for journalists.
Yes friends, the whole thing has been, “Brought under law.” Well, that’s comforting.
Using Amazon’s Search Inside This Book feature, I typed in Binney. Zero results. Then I searched for Klein. Zero results. So, the two men mainly responsible for exposing what NSA is doing, with regard to massive, indiscriminate domestic intercepts, aren’t mentioned at all.
Via: Washingtonian:
Ragtime, which appears in official reports by the abbreviation RT, consists of four parts.
Ragtime-A involves US-based interception of all foreign-to-foreign counterterrorism-related data;
Ragtime-B deals with data from foreign governments that transits through the US;
Ragtime-C deals with counterproliferation actvities;
and then there’s Ragtime-P, which will probably be of greatest interest to those who continue to demand more information from the NSA about what it does in the United States.
P stands for Patriot Act. Ragtime-P is the remnant of the original President’s Surveillance Program, the name given to so-called “warrantless wiretapping” activities after 9/11, in which one end of a phone call or an e-mail terminated inside the United States. That collection has since been brought under law, but civil liberties groups, journalists, and legal scholars continue to seek more information about what it entailed, who was targeted, and what authorities exist today for domestic intelligence-gathering.
3-D Printed Car
February 27th, 2013Via: Wired:
Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions in February
February 27th, 2013Thank you very much.
Pookie $75
EO $30
MW $35
SH AU$10
Eileen $75
January Earnings
February 27th, 2013Total earnings in January came to $1621.01. Thanks very much to everyone who sent funds and/or conducted business via Cryptogon’s affiliate links. We appreciate it very much.
We’ve had to buy a new-for-us (used) car, so that’s a really fast way to wipe out a large chunk of savings. I wanted to get a Toyota Hiace with a cargo floor and benches (if you have or have had young boys, you would understand the desirability of this), but the prices for those vehicles are hair-on-fire insane. The used ones in our price range had done 300000km, 400000km, 500000km. haha. No thanks.
The Nissan Lafesta (nope, it’s not La Fiesta) has to be the best kept secret in used Japanese market imports in New Zealand. I bought one from some flipflop wearing Russians and a really rough looking Kiwi guy. Despite appearances and paranoia, it’s all legit and the vehicle goes really well, although the air conditioning only works intermittently… Anyway… There’s a bit more as to why we needed to do this, which I’ll leave for another time. Long story short, thanks for making it possible for us to get this car.
Advanced Persistent Threats Subverting Encryption Systems
February 27th, 2013The fact that the underlying systems represent weaker links than the encryption schemes has been there since the beginning. However, with states and other organizations allocating increasing resources to offensive information warfare, these weak links are increasingly being exploited to do end runs around otherwise strong encryption.
Via: ThreatPost:
In the current climate of continuous attacks and intrusions by APT crews, government-sponsored groups and others organizations, cryptography is becoming less and less important and defenders need to start thinking about new ways to protect data on systems that they assume are compromised, one of the fathers of public-key cryptography said Tuesday. Adi Shamir, who helped design the original RSA algorithm, said that security experts should be preparing for a “post-cryptography” world.
“I definitely believe that cryptography is becoming less important. In effect, even the most secure computer systems in the most isolated locations have been penetrated over the last couple of years by a series of APTs and other advanced attacks,” Shamir, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said during the Cryptographers’ Panel session at the RSA Conference here today.
“We should rethink how we protect ourselves. Traditionally we have thought about two lines of defense. The first was to prevent the insertion of the APT with antivirus and other defenses. The second was to detect the activity of the APT once it’s there. But recent history has shown us that the APT can survive both of these defenses and operate for several years.”
Britain: Man Refuses to Pay for TV License Because BBC Covered Up Facts About 9/11
February 26th, 2013Via: Daily Mail:
A 49-year-old man refused to pay his TV licence because he believed the BBC covered up facts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Tony Rooke, who represented himself today at Horsham Magistrates’ Court in West Sussex, said he did not want to give money to an organisation ‘funding the practice of terrorism’.
Rooke, who admitted owning a TV and watching it without a licence, was found guilty of using an unlicensed set, given a six-month conditional discharge and told to pay £200 costs.
He was visited in May 2012 by an inspector after withdrawing his licence in March, but said he was withholding the funds under the Terrorism Act.
Section 15 of the 2000 Act states that it is an offence for someone to invite another to provide money, intending that it should be used, or having reasonable cause to suspect that it may be used, for terrorism purposes.
‘I am withholding all funds from the BBC, the Government and subsidiaries under Section 15 of the Terrorism Act,’ he told the inspector.
He added that he had already lodged a complaint with the BBC.
Rooke told the court: ‘I believe the BBC, who are directly funded by the licence fee, are furthering the purposes of terrorism and I have incontrovertible evidence to this effect. I do not use this word lightly given where I am.’
He was not allowed to show his pre-prepared video evidence in court because the District Judge said it was not relevant to the trial.
Palestinian Prisoner Was Tortured Before Dying in Israeli Jail
February 26th, 2013Via: Guardian:
A Palestinian prisoner whose death in Israeli custody fanned violent clashes across the West Bank over the weekend was tortured before he died, the Palestinian Authority has said.
The results of an autopsy conducted in Tel Aviv were revealed at a press conference in Ramallah on Sunday evening after a day of angry protests across the West Bank and Gaza in which dozens were injured.
The findings contradict the Israeli prison service’s claim that Arafat Jaradat died on Saturday from a cardiac arrest.
A Palestinian doctor’s investigations found that while Jaradat’s arteries were clear, the state of his body suggested he had been beaten in the days before his death.
That contrasts with an Israeli health ministry statement that said that the autopsy found “no signs of external trauma … apart from those pertaining to resuscitation [attempts] and a small graze on the right side of his chest”.
It said: “No evidence of disease was found during the autopsy. Two internal hemorrhages were detected, one on the shoulder and one on the right side of the chest. Two ribs were broken, which may indicate resuscitation attempts. The initial findings cannot determine the cause of death. At this stage, until microscopic and toxicology reports are in, the cause of death cannot be tied to the autopsy findings.”
The 30-year-old, a petrol station worker and father of two, was arrested on 18 February in relation to a stone-throwing incident in November during which an Israeli was slightly injured.
Why a One-Room West Virginia Library Runs a $20,000 Cisco Router
February 26th, 2013Via: Ars Technica:
Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town’s public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It’s housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an “extremely small facility with only one Internet connection.” Which is why it’s such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for “mid-size to large deployments,” according to Cisco.
In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) just released by the state’s legislative auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million of federal money on such routers, installed indiscriminately in both large institutions and one-room libraries across the state. The routers were purchased without ever asking the state’s libraries, cops, and schools what they needed. And when distributed, the expensive routers were passed out without much apparent care. The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people… and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000.
Foxconn Reshuffle: Some Manufacturing Going to Taiwan, Brazil, Indonesia and USA
February 25th, 2013Via: Forbes:
Last Monday, Gou announced that Foxconn’s next major expansion push would be focused on Taiwan, where he wanted to put plants in New Taipei City, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. This comes at a time when the company is putting off the expansion of one of its China facilities, in Zhengzhou.
Gou founded Foxconn in Taiwan in the 1970s, and moved manufacturing away from the island republic to Shenzhen at the end of the 1980s. Now, he is beginning to reverse the process. Moreover, Gou is committing even more funds outside China. For instance, Foxconn will soon open facilities that will employ another 10,000 workers in Brazil. At the same time, he is negotiating with authorities to commit as much as $10 billion to factories in Indonesia.
And then there is the good ole U.S.A., where Foxconn already makes server parts in California and Texas. Said Louis Woo, the spokesman, “We are looking at doing more manufacturing in the U.S. because, in general, customers want more to be done there.”
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Why should Gou leave the country that made him rich and famous? There are, for starters, spiraling wages, worker discontent, forced unionization, tough environmental enforcement. But the big factor today—and the one no one thought about three years ago—is political risk. Beijing wants territory controlled by its neighbors and, as a result, China is getting itself into nasty scrapes, especially with Japan. Moreover, the Chinese have designs on the sovereign state of Taiwan, which they consider their 34th province. For IT companies, China’s friction with these two countries is a problem because many of their products rely on Japanese and Taiwanese components.
And the Chinese have not only gone after neighbors. Since late 2010, Beijing has sought to punish American, European Union, and Norwegian companies for perceived misdeeds of their governments. In Norway’s case, it was the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo that started a multi-year Chinese war against salmon imports from the Scandinavian country.
Costs can always be passed on to customers or absorbed. Supply chain disruptions, however, can kill a business. Beijing’s retaliation last September against Japanese companies showed that China is no longer a reliable member of global supply chains.
