U.S. Not Seeking Goldman Charges
August 10th, 2012Shocker.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
After a yearlong investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it won’t bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis.
In a statement, the Justice Department said “the burden of proof” couldn’t be met to prosecute Goldman criminally based on claims made in an extensive report prepared by a U.S. Senate panel that investigated the financial crisis.
“Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report,” the statement read.
The Justice Department reserved the right to bring charges in the future if new evidence emerges.
In a statement Thursday, Goldman said: “We are pleased that this matter is behind us.”
Demand for Water Outstrips Supply
August 9th, 2012Via: Nature:
Almost one-quarter of the world’s population lives in regions where groundwater is being used up faster than it can be replenished, concludes a comprehensive global analysis of groundwater depletion, published this week in Nature1.
Across the world, human civilizations depend largely on tapping vast reservoirs of water that have been stored for up to thousands of years in sand, clay and rock deep underground. These massive aquifers — which in some cases stretch across multiple states and country borders — provide water for drinking and crop irrigation, as well as to support ecosystems such as forests and fisheries.
Yet in most of the world’s major agricultural regions, including the Central Valley in California, the Nile delta region of Egypt, and the Upper Ganges in India and Pakistan, demand exceeds these reservoirs’ capacity for renewal.
Gauss: Another Cyber-Espionage Toolkit Based on Flame Platform
August 9th, 2012Via: Kaspersky Lab:
While analyzing the Flame malware that we detected in May 2012, Kaspersky Lab experts identified some distinguishing features of Flame’s modules. Based on those features, we discovered that in 2009, the first variant of the Stuxnet worm included a module that was created based on the Flame platform. This indicates that there was some form of collaboration between the groups that developed the Flame and Tilded (Stuxnet/Duqu) platforms.
Based on the results of a detailed analysis of Flame, we continued to actively search for new, unknown components. A more in-depth analysis conducted in June 2012 resulted in the discovery of a new, previously unknown malware platform that uses a modular structure resembling that of Flame, a similar code base and system for communicating to C&C servers, as well as numerous other similarities to Flame.
In our opinion, all of this clearly indicates that the new platform which we discovered and which we called ‘Gauss,’ is another example of a cyber-espionage toolkit based on the Flame platform.
Gauss is a project developed in 2011-2012 along the same lines as the Flame project. The malware has been actively distributed in the Middle East for at least the past 10 months. The largest number of Gauss infections has been recorded in Lebanon, in contrast to Flame, which spread primarily in Iran.
Kamikaze Drones
August 9th, 2012Via: Army Technology:
From the earliest days of military bomb-disposal robotics, their very purpose embraced the possibility that they may be damaged or destroyed during their mission, while protecting the lives of humans who would otherwise be doing the job. But the great expense involved in their development and production meant that every precaution possible was taken to make sure they returned home safely.
The latest advances in military drones, however, see them deliberately designed to contravene Asimov’s third law of robotics, which demands self-protection so long as no human comes to harm and orders are obeyed.
Military robots can now be mass-produced so cheaply that it makes more economic sense to have them crash into enemy targets rather than engage them, or to trigger bombs and mines directly rather than from a safe distance.
While targeting on-board weapons is tricky and often requires the skills of multiple operators, direct impact needs only manned or automated navigation.
Blackwater Pays Millions in Arms Smuggling Case
August 9th, 2012Via: Wired:
Depending on how you look at it, the world’s most notorious mercenary firm just got away with misleading the government about arming and training foreign governments — or the company agreed to pay millions, only to defer a potential prosecution on those charges. The firm formerly known as Blackwater has agreed to fork over $7.5 million to the Justice Department $7.5 million to avoid going to court on 17 criminal charges. It’s not exactly a bank-breaker for the company, now known as Academi LLC. Then again, the legal deal announced yesterday doesn’t get Academi entirely off the hook.
On Tuesday, Academi and the Justice Department entered into a “Deferred Prosecution Agreement” that allows Academi to spend the next 36 months convincing the government that its extra-legal extracurricular activities are all in the past, a vestige of the firm’s former owners. If it can’t, however, Academi may have federal prosecutors breathing down their necks.
In a statement, Academi described itself as “pleased” to reach the deal on what spokesman John Procter pointedly called a “legacy matter” — that is, an account that the current ownership, which took control of the firm in late 2010, had nothing to do with.
Kremlin Wiretaps Dissident Blogger — Who Tweets the Bug
August 9th, 2012Via: Wired:
Alexei Navalny showed up to work in Moscow on Monday to discover he was being bugged. He called the police, like many perhaps would, but not before tweeting photos and video of himself and his colleagues taking the Kremlin’s monitoring devices apart.
It’s not hard to figure out why Navalny was bugged. He’s one of Russia’s most influential anti-corruption bloggers and is at the center of a protest movement aimed at toppling the regime of President Vladimir Putin. Since late July, the 36-year-old lawyer has faced possible arrest, trial and up to 10 years in prison for charges Putin’s prosecutors claim stem from an embezzlement scheme, but which Navalny and his supporters claim is an attempt to silence him.
The discovery began when Navalny’s colleagues at the watchdog group Anti-Corruption Fund had just returned from vacation, and “just for a giggle,” inspected his office with a “bug detector,” Navalny blogged. And as a prominent opposition figure, the odds that Navalny was being spied on were pretty good. Using the detector, his team found a device attached to wire hidden inside the wall molding. “Experts, what is this?” he asked his Twitter followers, attaching a photo. The strange device was apparently a microphone.
Treasury’s Secretive $2.4 Trillion Fund Guarantee
August 9th, 2012Via: CNBC:
Details about a secretive government program to bail out money-market mutual funds are finally coming to light.
Acting without any explicit Congressional authority, the U.S. Treasury guaranteed in excess of $2.4 trillion of money market funds after the giant Reserve Primary Fund “broke the buck” following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The program, which ended on Sept. 18, 2009, seems to have successfully prevented a panicked run by money-market fund investors.
But until now the Treasury has kept the identities of the funds that received government backing and the amounts guaranteed secret. It was not clear how many funds obtained backing or for how much taxpayers were on the hook during the program’s duration.
Linus Wilson, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, recently obtained data about the program from the Treasury, through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The data from the Treasury show that taxpayers were backing in excess of $2.4 trillion through the mutual fund program. Hundreds of funds participated in the program, amounting to almost 99 percent of the total money-market mutual fund assets.
$9 Corn Could Be a Big Problem for Economy
August 9th, 2012Via: CNBC:
Corn prices – which have already surged about 50 percent in the past two months – could go significantly higher if current trends hold up, and the effects might be felt throughout the economy.
Price momentum indicates corn could rise at least 21 percent over the next six months, putting $9.50 a bushel or even higher into play, according to a model used by the American Restaurant Association.
3-D Printer Brings “Magic Arms” to a Two-Year-Old
August 9th, 2012Via: AllThingsD:
Two-year-old Emma Lavelle was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (or AMC), a condition that stunts the development of her muscles and stiffens her joints. As a result, her capacity for movement has been severely limited, and she has spent much of her life undergoing surgeries and corrective treatments. One of the most promising treatments for those with AMC is the WREX device, a type of body cast that aids AMC patients in lifting their limbs with the help of elastic bands and artificial support joints.
Problem was, Emma was far too young and small for the typical size WREX devices. So two Wilmington, Del., researchers — Dr. Tariq Rahman and designer Whitney Sample — developed a scaled-down version of the cast that fit for Emma’s smaller frame.
The two took CAD blueprints from the existing WREX design and scaled them down to the size they would need to be to fit Emma. Unfortunately, the machinery they used to build past WREX devices couldn’t deal with the smaller-sized parts for Emma’s model.
So they got creative. Using a smaller 3-D printer that Rahman already had in his office, the researchers were able to print the smaller WREX parts from the scaled-down designs. Instead of metal, the 3-D printer fabricated the new parts out of ABS plastic, which proved sturdy enough to hold up to everyday use.
The result? Emma can now move her arms about freely and much more easily than ever before. She can play with toys, feed herself and even hug her parents without needing their help. In short, it changed her life.
Research Credit: latitude38
NYPD and Microsoft Team Up to Peddle Retroactive Surveillance System
August 9th, 2012Via: Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft helped the New York Police Department build a surveillance and intelligence sharing network to fight terrorism and help investigators solve crimes. Now the NYPD will get a hefty cut of the revenue as the partners prepare to jointly market the intelligence system to other police departments around the world.
Microsoft finished work on the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System in October. The software allows investigators to simultaneously view video gathered from the city’s thousands of cameras and information culled from 911 calls and public records.
Microsoft will now share 30% of the revenue with the city as the company sells the technology to police forces around the country and in allied countries, according to Mike McDuffie, vice-president for Americas services, sales and business development at Microsoft, and a former general in the U.S. Army.
“We hope to make back everything we spent,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a press conference Wednesday at the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, in front of a wall of blinking surveillance feeds. That amount would be as much as $40 million, including the cost of labor by city employees, Bloomberg said.
The partnership is an example of how an enterprise, such as the city of New York, can derive revenue from the software tools that it creates for its own use.
The deal represents a windfall for the city at time when it is strapped for cash. It’s the first time Microsoft has shared revenue with a public sector client that hired the company to develop a product, McDuffie said.
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NYPD, Microsoft Hope to Make a Mint Off New Surveillance System
Via: Atlantic Wire:
The new data analysis system New York police department unveiled Monday not only monitors images from surveillance cameras, license plate scanners, and myriad other data streams citywide, in real time, it also has the power to make the NYPD money. The department developed the so called Domain Awareness System in partnership with Microsoft, and every time Microsoft sells a system, NYPD will get 30 percent of the sale, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Wednesday.
The new system doesn’t add any new surveillance input, but it makes processing and analyzing the existing data — including streams from public and private security cameras and sensors, maps, and city records — way more powerful. “The system allows investigators to instantly see information including arrest records, 911 calls associated with a suspect and related crimes occurring in a particular area, according to the [NYPD] statement,” Bloomberg’s Chris Dolmetsch and Henry Goldman report. “It also allows investigators to map crimes to reveal patterns and track where a car associated with a suspect is located and has been in the past.”
