CIA Says No Problem with Its NYPD Partnership
July 27th, 2012Via: AP:
The CIA said Friday its internal watchdog found nothing wrong with the spy agency’s close partnership with the New York Police Department.
The agency’s inspector general concluded that no laws were broken and there was “no evidence that any part of the agency’s support to the NYPD constituted ‘domestic spying’,” CIA spokesman Preston Golson said.
The inspector general decided to do a preliminary investigation after a series of stories by The Associated Press revealed how after the 9/11 attacks the CIA helped the NYPD build domestic intelligence programs that were used to spy on Muslims. A CIA officer also directed intelligence collection and reviewed reports, according to former NYPD officials involved.
Controlling Monkey Brains and Behavior with Light
July 26th, 2012The Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, 1971 Warner Bros.
Via: PhysOrg:
Researchers reporting online on July 26 in Current Biology have for the first time shown that they can control the behavior of monkeys by using pulses of blue light to very specifically activate particular brain cells. The findings represent a key advance for optogenetics, a state-of-the-art method for making causal connections between brain activity and behavior. Based on the discovery, the researchers say that similar light-based mind control could likely also be made to work in humans for therapeutic ends.
“We are the first to show that optogenetics can alter the behavior of monkeys,” says Wim Vanduffel of Massachusetts General Hospital and KU Leuven Medical School. “This opens the door to use of optogenetics at a large scale in primate research and to start developing optogenetic-based therapies for humans.”
In optogenetics, neurons are made to respond to light through the insertion of light-sensitive genes derived from particular microbial organisms. Earlier studies had primarily validated this method for use in invertebrates and rodents, with only a few studies showing that optogenetics can alter activity in monkey brains on a fine scale.
In the new study, the researchers focused on neurons that control particular eye movements. Using optogenetics together with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they showed that they could use light to activate these neurons, generating brain activity and subtle changes in eye-movement behavior.
The researchers also found that optogenetic stimulation of their focal brain region produced changes in the activity of specific neural networks located at some distance from the primary site of light activation.
The findings not only pave the way for a much more detailed understanding of how different parts of the brain control behavior, but they may also have important clinical applications in treating Parkinson’s disease, addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other neurological conditions.
Skype Makes Chats and User Data More Available to Police
July 26th, 2012Via: Washington Post:
Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police, said industry and government officials familiar with the changes.
Surveillance of the audio and video feeds remains impractical — even when courts issue warrants, say industry officials with direct knowledge of the matter. But that barrier could eventually vanish as Skype becomes one of the world’s most popular forms of telecommunication.
Barrels of Human Fetuses Found In Russian Forest
July 26th, 2012Via: AP:
Villagers in Russia’s south Urals region have stumbled upon a gruesome discovery – four barrels left in a forest containing 248 human fetuses, prompting an official probe, officials said Tuesday.
Police in the Sverdlovsk region said the fetuses, preserved in formaldehyde, were kept in barrels with tags marked with surnames and numbers.
The fetuses were found a few miles away from a highway linking the region’s capital, Yekaterinburg, with another big city, Nizhny Tagil. Police believe that they may have come from four local hospitals and have started an investigation.
The fetuses have been placed in a local morgue.
The Health Ministry said it had ordered a check of local hospitals to prevent such incidents occurring again.
Research Credit: TR
Spoofing Eye-Scanners
July 26th, 2012Via: Wired:
Remember that scene in Minority Report when the spider robots stalk Tom Cruise to his apartment and scan his iris to identify him?
Things could have turned out so much better for Cruise had he been wearing a pair of contact lenses embossed with an image of someone else’s iris.
New research being released this week at the Black Hat security conference by academics in Spain and the U.S. may make that possible.
The academics have found a way to recreate iris images that match digital iris codes that are stored in databases and used by iris-recognition systems to identify people. The replica images, they say, can trick commercial iris-recognition systems into believing they’re real images and could help someone thwart identification at border crossings or gain entry to secure facilities protected by biometric systems.
U.S. Government Health Journal: Fluoride Lowers IQ
July 26th, 2012Via: Environmental Health Perspectives:
Thus, children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low fluoride areas.
Related: The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson
Tell-All Telephone
July 26th, 2012Anyone who has read Cryptogon over the last several years knows that it’s not as bad as the following piece suggests; it’s actually much worse.
Via: Zeit Online:
Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.
By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz’s life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period. Each column corresponds to one day.
Research Credit: K
With Nuclear Power Plants Offline, Japan Runs Up Record Trade Deficit Burning Imported Fuels; Export Markets Slumping
July 25th, 2012Via: Washington Post:
Japan posted its biggest first-half trade deficit on record, according to government figures released Wednesday, highlighting the economic consequences as this nuclear-averse country imports fossil fuels to meet its energy needs.
The Ministry of Finance reported a 2.92 trillion yen (or $37.3 billion) trade deficit, which reflected not only Japan’s surging need for oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), but also weakened exports to slumping markets like Europe and China.
Is Delisle Espionage Case Related to ECHELON?
July 25th, 2012Via: The Star:
The ongoing fallout from the opaque espionage case of Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle has reached Australia.
Classified documents and data contained in the massive cache of secrets allegedly leaked by the Nova Scotia naval intelligence officer have “compromised Australian intelligence information,” according to a report Tuesday in the Melbourne-based newspaper The Age.
…
The newspaper also said the leak has most affected Australia’s ability to manage intelligence in Canada and the United States, as well as its Defence Signals Directorate and the Defence Intelligence Organization.
All three countries, along with Britain and New Zealand, are members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing consortium, which was developed in the early years of the Cold War. The alliance capitalizes on each member’s relative geographic and resource strengths “to contribute to the knowledge and intelligence of the whole,” said Martin Rudner, professor emeritus of international affairs at Carleton University.
While Canadian officials have yet to disclose what, exactly, was contained in the leak, it is believed to include signals intelligence, or electronic communications gathered from satellites, phones and online sources. Reports that the information was leaked to Russia have not been confirmed.
Media Farce: ‘Reporters’ Consult with Regime Censors Before Publishing Stories
July 24th, 2012Via: New York Times:
They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.
Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review.
The verdict from the campaign — an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script — is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.
The push and pull over what is on the record is one of journalism’s perennial battles. But those negotiations typically took place case by case, free from the red pens of press minders. Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.
Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House — almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.
The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article.
