UK Government Quietly Rewrites Hacking Laws to Give GCHQ Immunity
May 17th, 2015Via: ArsTechnica:
The UK government has quietly passed new legislation that exempts GCHQ, police, and other intelligence officers from prosecution for hacking into computers and mobile phones.
While major or controversial legislative changes usually go through normal parliamentary process (i.e. democratic debate) before being passed into law, in this case an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act was snuck in under the radar as secondary legislation. According to Privacy International, “It appears no regulators, commissioners responsible for overseeing the intelligence agencies, the Information Commissioner’s Office, industry, NGOs or the public were notified or consulted about the proposed legislative changes… There was no public debate.”
Whistleblower: Trident Nuclear Submarine Program
May 17th, 2015Full text: William McNeilly document (.pdf).
Via: BBC:
The Royal Navy is to investigate claims that security and safety procedures around the Trident nuclear submarines are inadequate.
The investigation was launched after the claims were made by a submariner who has gone on the run.
Able Seaman William McNeilly alleged the Trident programme was a “disaster waiting to happen.”
The Royal Navy said that the submarine fleet operated “under the most stringent safety regime.”
In an internet post, Mr McNeilly said he was an Engineering Technician Submariner who was on patrol with HMS Victorious this year.
He has written an 18-page report, called The Secret Nuclear Threat, detailing what he claims are serious security and safety breaches on board the vessel.
Research Credit: PW
Feds Say That Banned Researcher Hacked Flight Control Systems
May 17th, 2015And Now: Man’s Claims of Hacking Plane Discredited by Law Enforcement
Via: Bloomberg:
U.S. law enforcement officials have no credible evidence that commercial airplane cockpits have been hacked from passengers’ seats, contradicting a man who claims he did just that.
While most airplanes can’t be hacked because flight-control computers are separate from the connections passengers use, newer aircraft have more interconnections, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said an April 14 report. Chris Roberts, founder of security intelligence company One World Labs, claimed to FBI agents that he exploited such interconnections 15 to 20 times, and in at least one instance sent commands to an engine.
Investigators don’t believe that such attempts could be successful, a senior law enforcement official said Monday. The official asked not to be named because an investigation is continuing into Roberts’s claims of tampering, which would be illegal under federal law.
—
Via: Wired:
A security researcher kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting about security vulnerabilities in its system had previously taken control of an airplane and caused it to briefly fly sideways, according to an application for a search warrant filed by an FBI agent.
Chris Roberts, a security researcher with One World Labs, told the FBI agent during an interview in February that he had hacked the in-flight entertainment system, or IFE, on an airplane and overwrote code on the plane’s Thrust Management Computer while aboard the flight. He was able to issue a climb command and make the plane briefly change course, the document states.
“He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” FBI Special Agent Mark Hurley wrote in his warrant application (.pdf). “He also stated that he used Vortex software after comprising/exploiting or ‘hacking’ the airplane’s networks. He used the software to monitor traffic from the cockpit system.”
Strong Statin-Diabetes Link Seen in Large Study of Tricare Patients
May 15th, 2015Via: Medicalxpress:
In a database study of nearly 26,000 beneficiaries of Tricare, the military health system, those taking statin drugs to control their cholesterol were 87 percent more likely to develop diabetes.
The study, reported online April 28, 2015, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, confirms past findings on the link between the widely prescribed drugs and diabetes risk. But it is among the first to show the connection in a relatively healthy group of people. The study included only people who at baseline were free of heart disease, diabetes, and other severe chronic disease.
“In our study, statin use was associated with a significantly higher risk of new-onset diabetes, even in a very healthy population,” says lead author Dr. Ishak Mansi. “The risk of diabetes with statins has been known, but up until now it was thought that this might be due to the fact that people who were prescribed statins had greater medical risks to begin with.”
…
In the study, statin use was also associated with a “very high risk of diabetes complications,” says Mansi. “This was never shown before.” Among 3,351 pairs of similar patients—part of the overall study group—those patients on statins were 250 percent more likely than their non-statin-using counterparts to develop diabetes with complications.
Statin users were also 14 percent more likely to become overweight or obese after being on the drugs.
Mansi points out that other studies have arrived at a similar finding through different research methods.
The study also found that the higher the dose of any of the statins, the greater the risk of diabetes, diabetes complications, and obesity.
Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors
May 14th, 2015Via: FirstLook:
The talking heads have been backstopping the NSA’s mass surveillance more or less continuously since it was revealed. They spoke out to support the agency when NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of its programs in 2013, and they’ve kept up their advocacy ever since — on television news shows, newspaper op-ed pages, online and at Congressional hearings. But it’s often unclear just how financially cozy these pundits are with the surveillance state they defend, since they’re typically identified with titles that give no clues about their conflicts of interest.
Danish Physician and Medical Researcher: Psychiatric Drugs Do More Harm Than Good
May 13th, 2015Via: Guardian:
Psychiatric drugs do more harm than good and the use of most antidepressants and dementia drugs could be virtually stopped without causing harm, an expert on clinical trials argues in a leading medical journal.
The views expressed in a British Medical Journal debate by Peter Gøtzsche, professor and director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark, are strongly opposed by many experts in mental health. However, others say the debate around the use of psychiatric drugs is important and acknowledge that there has been overuse of antipsychotics to quieten aggressive patients with dementia.
Gøtzsche says more than half a million people over the age of 65 die as a result of the use of psychiatric drugs every year in the western world. “Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” he writes.
He claims that trials carried out with funding from drug companies into the efficacy of psychiatric drugs have almost all been biased, because the patients involved have usually been on other medication first. They stop their drugs and often experience a withdrawal phase prior to starting the trial drug, which then appears to have a big benefit. He also claims that deaths from suicide in clinical trials are under-reported.
In trials of the modern antidepressants fluoxetine and venlafaxine, says Gøtzsche, it takes only a few extra days for depression in the placebo group – given dummy pills – to lift as much as in the group given the drugs. He argues that there is spontaneous remission of the disease over time.
Results from trials of schizophrenia drugs are also disappointing, he argues, and those for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) are uncertain. “The short-term relief seems to be replaced by long-term harms. Animal studies strongly suggest that these drugs can produce brain damage, which is probably the case for all psychotropic drugs,” he writes.
You Are Looking at the Last Male Northern White Rhino
May 13th, 2015Via: Guardian:
What is it like to look at the very last of something? To contemplate the passing of a unique wonder that will soon vanish from the face of the earth? You are seeing it. Sudan is the last male northern white rhino on the planet.
New Machine Could One Day Replace Anesthesiologists
May 12th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
The new machine that could one day replace anesthesiologists sat quietly next to a hospital gurney occupied by Nancy Youssef-Ringle. She was nervous. In a few minutes, a machine — not a doctor — would sedate the 59-year-old for a colon cancer screening called a colonoscopy.
But she had done her research. She had even asked a family friend, an anesthesiologist, what he thought of the device. He was blunt: “That’s going to replace me.”
One day, maybe. For now, the Sedasys anesthesiology machine is only getting started, the leading lip of an automation wave that could transform hospitals just as technology changed automobile factories. But this machine doesn’t seek to replace only hospital shift workers. It’s targeting one of the best-paid medical specialties, making it all the more intriguing — or alarming, depending on your point of view.
Cost of Fruit and Vegetables Soars in Developing world – While Junk Food Gets Cheaper
May 12th, 2015Via: Telegraph:
Fruit and vegetables have almost doubled in price in parts of the developing world over the past 20 years, calling into question the idea that modern farming methods lower basic food prices for the poor.
Paradoxically, the cost of some processed foods has fallen by a fifth over the same time, prompting fears over increasing obesity.
Researchers with the Overseas Development Institute looked at relative food prices in Brazil, China, South Korea and Mexico to produce “The rising cost of a healthy diet” – the first study of its kind in emerging economies.
The report’s authors found that fruit and vegetables had risen in price by up to 91 per cent in real terms between 1990 and 2012, a bigger increase than for other any other food group. “In high income countries over the last 30 years it seems that the cost of healthy items in the diet has risen more than that of less healthy options, thereby encouraging diets that lead to excess weight,” said Steve Wiggins, one of the authors of the report.
“It seems the same may apply in emerging economies, where prices of fruit and vegetables have been rising more than most other foods, including energy-dense processed foods.”
“You Make It, We’ll Take It”: DEA Took a Young Man’s Life Savings Without Ever Charging Him with a Crime
May 12th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
Joseph Rivers was hoping to hit it big. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the aspiring businessman from just outside of Detroit had pulled together $16,000 in seed money to fulfill a lifetime dream of starting a music video company. Last month, Rivers took the first step in that voyage, saying goodbye to the family and friends who had supported him at home and boarding an Amtrak train headed for Los Angeles.
He never made it. From the Albuquerque Journal:
A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.
The agent found Rivers’s cash, still in a bank envelope. He explained why he had it: He was starting a business in California, and he’d had trouble in the past withdrawing large sums of money from out-of-state banks.
The agents didn’t believe him, according to the article. They said they thought the money was involved in some sort of drug activity. Rivers let them call his mother back home to corroborate the story. They didn’t believe her, either.
The agents found nothing in Rivers’s belongings that indicated that he was involved with the drug trade: no drugs, no guns. They didn’t arrest him or charge him with a crime. But they took his cash anyway, every last cent, under the authority of the Justice Department’s civil asset forfeiture program.
