China Lake: Military Test Will Disrupt GPS Signals Above 5,000 Feet
June 7th, 2016Via: Gizmodo:
Starting today, it appears the US military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. We say “appears” because officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the US Navy’s largest installation in the Mojave Desert. And the Navy won’t tell us much about what’s going on.
The FAA issued an advisory warning pilots on Saturday that global positioning systems (GPS) could be unreliable during six different days this month, primarily in the Southwestern United States. On June 7, 9, 21, 23, 28, and 30th the GPS interference testing will be taking place between 9:30am and 3:30pm Pacific time. But if you’re on the ground, you probably won’t notice interference.
The testing will be centered on China Lake, California—home to the Navy’s 1.1 million acre Naval Air Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. The potentially lost signals will stretch hundreds of miles in each direction and will affect various types of GPS, reaching the furthest at higher altitudes. But the jamming will only affect aircraft above 5,000 feet. As you can see from the FAA map below, the jamming will almost reach the California-Oregon border at 4o,000 feet above sea level and 505 nautical miles at its greatest range.
New Zealand Sitting On Half-Trillion-Dollar Debt Bomb
June 6th, 2016Via: NZ Herald:
New Zealand is sitting on a half-a-trillion-dollar debt bomb and Kiwis are increasingly treating their houses like cash machines, piling on the debt as they watch the value of their properties soar.
Reserve Bank figures show household debt, excluding investment property, has risen 23 per cent in the past five years to $163.4 billion. Incomes have risen only 11.5 per cent.
Households are now carrying a debt level that is equivalent to 162 per cent of their annual disposable income – higher than the level reached before the global financial crisis.
NATO: Largest War Game in Eastern Europe Since Cold War
June 6th, 2016Via: Guardian:
The largest war game in eastern Europe since the end of the cold war has started in Poland, as Nato and partner countries seek to mount a display of strength as a response to concerns about Russia’s assertiveness and actions.
The 10-day military exercise, involving 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles from 24 countries, has been welcomed among Nato’s allies in the region, though defence experts warn that any mishap could prompt an offensive reaction from Moscow.
A defence attache at a European embassy in Warsaw said the “nightmare scenario” of the exercise, named Anaconda-2016, would be “a mishap, a miscalculation which the Russians construe, or choose to construe, as an offensive action”.
Scientists Growing Human Organs in Pigs: “We Think There Is Very Low Potential for a Human Brain to Grow”
June 6th, 2016Via: BBC:
The main concern is that the human cells might migrate to the developing pig’s brain and make it, in some way, more human.
Pablo Ross says this is unlikely but is a key reason why the research is proceeding with such caution: “We think there is very low potential for a human brain to grow, but this is something we will be investigating.”
His team has previously injected human stem cells into pig embryos but without first creating the genetic niche. Prof Ross said although they later found human cells in several parts of the developing foetus, they “struggled to compete” with the pig cells. By deleting a key gene involved in the creation of the pig pancreas, they hope the human cells will have more success creating a human-like pancreas.
Other teams in the United States have created human-pig chimeric embryos but none has allowed the foetuses to be born.
No, Norway Isn’t Banning Diesel and Petrol Cars – Yet
June 6th, 2016Via: TheLocal:
A report that Norwegian politicians agreed to ban the sale of diesel and petrol-powered cars by 2025 quickly flew around the world, but it is “not correct”. At least not yet.
Homeland Security Using Private Contractor Vans to Transport and Release Illegal Aliens Inside the U.S.
June 4th, 2016This gets a Florida tick because G4S has its U.S. headquarters in Jupiter.
Via: Judicial Watch:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents, Border Patrol sources tell Judicial Watch. The government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.
The OTMs are from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala and Border Patrol officials say this week’s batch was in custody for a couple of days and ordered to call family members in the U.S. so they could purchase a bus ticket for their upcoming trip from Phoenix. Authorities didn’t bother checking the identity of the U.S. relatives or if they’re in the country legally, according to a Border Patrol official directly involved in the matter. American taxpayers pick up the fare for those who claim to have a “credible fear,” Border Patrol sources told JW. None of the OTMs were issued official court appearance documents, but were told to “promise” they’d show up for a hearing when notified, said federal agents with firsthand knowledge of the operation.
A security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is called G4S and claims to be the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida. Judicial Watch is filing a number of public records requests to get more information involving the arrangement between G4S and the government, specifically the transport of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to other parts of the country. The photo accompanying this story shows the uniformed G4S guard that transported the OTMs this week from Tucson to Phoenix.
Flat Lens Promises Possible Revolution in Optics
June 4th, 2016Via: BBC:
A flat lens made of paint whitener on a sliver of glass could revolutionise optics, according to its US inventors.
Just 2mm across and finer than a human hair, the tiny device can magnify nanoscale objects and gives a sharper focus than top-end microscope lenses.
It is the latest example of the power of metamaterials, whose novel properties emerge from their structure.
Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre.
…
The lens is quite unlike the curved disks of glass familiar from cameras and binoculars. Instead, it is made of a thin layer of transparent quartz coated in millions of tiny pillars, each just tens of nanometres across and hundreds high.
Never10: Very Easily Pull the Plug on Windows 7 or 8.1 Updating to Windows 10
June 4th, 2016Never10 very easily allows you to prevent Windows 7 and 8.1 from updating to Windows 10. It can also remove the Windows 10 installation blob if it has already downloaded to your system. Never10 is tiny, free, doesn’t require installation and, after two clicks (max), you’re finished.
Shocker: MPs’ Private Emails Are Routinely Accessed by GCHQ
June 4th, 2016Via: Computer Weekly:
GCHQ and the US National Security Agency (NSA) have access to intercepted emails sent and received by all members of the UK Parliament and peers, including with their constituents, a Computer Weekly investigation has established.
The One About Google Voice by the Independent
June 3rd, 2016I occasionally use the voice feature on my Android phone, so I went to look at the recordings on Google, which the article below explains how to do.
Indeed, the audio is archived.
The article implies that Android is transmitting audio without the user initiating the voice feature.
While I don’t doubt that’s a possibility (see below), from looking at the list of audio sessions in Google’s history of my use of the feature, I don’t see any indication that it recorded any random conversations.
That said, I have definitely been targeted for audio surveillance via my mobile phone one time that I’m aware of. I visited a friend and set the phone down. The battery charge state was about 60%. When I went to leave a couple of hours later, I picked up the phone and the battery was nearly dead and the phone was hot. Under normal circumstances, it would have dropped by maybe a couple of percent. Someone very definitely decided to turn my phone into a bug that time. The phone never behaved like that before or since.
So while I don’t see any evidence of Android transmitting random audio in the manner described in the article below, Android is very definitely capable of being used as an audio bug, and it has happened to me to the point that it was totally obvious. It’s not like it came as a shock that this happened. I’d been reporting on the capability for years on Cryptogon. It just finally happened to me.
The incident I described above happened a couple of years ago and I never mentioned it on here. I thought that people might think, “Oh sure, conspiracy theorist thinks he was targeted for surveillance,” etc. etc. That’s fine, but that incident definitely happened. I’m mentioning it now because I think the danger of the piece below is that people will see their audio sessions, recognize them as legitimate, and assume nothing to see here, that’s the extent of what can happen with the phone.
Nope.
If you carry a mobile phone, or find yourself in the presence of people who carry mobile phones, know that any audio could potentially be recorded.
Snowden actually demonstrates how you can avoid having the phone turned into a bug when you’re not using it.
Of course, as soon as you put the battery back in, you give up your position and when you do anything on the phone, that’s compromised as well. But it might be helpful to someone to know that the mics and cameras can be removed.
Via: Independent:
Google could have a record of everything you have said around it for years, and you can listen to it yourself.
The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products.
The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people.
