MonsterMind: NSA’s Cyberwar Bot
August 13th, 2014Via: Wired:
Edward Snowden has made us painfully aware of the government’s sweeping surveillance programs over the last year. But a new program, currently being developed at the NSA, suggests that surveillance may fuel the government’s cyber defense capabilities, too.
The NSA whistleblower says the agency is developing a cyber defense system that would instantly and autonomously neutralize foreign cyberattacks against the US, and could be used to launch retaliatory strikes as well. The program, called MonsterMind, raises fresh concerns about privacy and the government’s policies around offensive digital attacks.
Although details of the program are scant, Snowden tells WIRED in an extensive interview with James Bamford that algorithms would scour massive repositories of metadata and analyze it to differentiate normal network traffic from anomalous or malicious traffic. Armed with this knowledge, the NSA could instantly and autonomously identify, and block, a foreign threat.
Using a Tactic Unseen in a Century, Countries Cordon Off Ebola-Racked Areas
August 13th, 2014Via: New York Times:
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is so out of control that governments there have revived a disease-fighting tactic not used in nearly a century: the “cordon sanitaire,” in which a line is drawn around the infected area and no one is allowed out.
Cordons, common in the medieval era of the Black Death, have not been seen since the border between Poland and Russia was closed in 1918 to stop typhus from spreading west. They have the potential to become brutal and inhumane. Centuries ago, in their most extreme form, everyone within the boundaries was left to die or survive, until the outbreak ended.
Plans for the new cordon were announced on Aug. 1 at an emergency meeting in Conakry, Guinea, of the Mano River Union, a regional association of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries hardest hit by Ebola, according to Agence France-Presse. The plan was to isolate a triangular area where the three countries meet, separated only by porous borders, and where 70 percent of the cases known at that time had been found.
Troops began closing internal roads in Liberia and Sierra Leone last week. The epidemic began in southern Guinea in December, but new cases there have slowed to a trickle. In the other two countries, the number of new cases is still rapidly rising. As of Monday, the region had seen 1,848 cases and 1,013 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, although many experts think that the real count is much higher because families in remote villages are avoiding hospitals and hiding victims.
Officials at the health organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which have experts advising the countries, say the tactic could help contain the outbreak but want to see it used humanely.
“It might work,” said Dr. Martin S. Cetron, the disease center’s chief quarantine expert. “But it has a lot of potential to go poorly if it’s not done with an ethical approach. Just letting the disease burn out and considering that the price of controlling it — we don’t live in that era anymore. And as soon as cases are under control, one should dial back the restrictions.”
Starwood Hotels Trials Robots That Make Deliveries to Guests
August 12th, 2014Via: CNBC:
Look out Rosie the Robot, Starwood Hotels’ Aloft brand has a taskmaster of its own.
His (or her?) name; A.L.O. pronounced “el-oh”, the hotels’ first Botlr (short of robotic butler.) Standing just under 3 feet tall, A.L.O. comes dressed in a vinyl-collared butler uniform and will soon be on call all day and night to fulfill requests from guests.
Forget your toothpaste? Need more towels? How about a late-night chocolate bar? All guests of the hotel have to do is call the front desk, where staff will load up the Botlr with requested items, punch in the guest’s room number and send it off to make the delivery, navigating hallways and even call for the elevator using Wi-Fi.
Wages in U.S. Down 23 Percent Since 2008
August 12th, 2014Via: Plain Dealer:
While 8.7 million jobs have been regained since the 2008 recession, they are paying much less, by an average of 23 percent, according to a report released Monday by the United States Conference of Mayors.
The report comes as debate continues about income inequality in the United States.
“While the economy is picking up steam, income inequality and wage gaps are an alarming trend that must be addressed,” said Conference of Mayors President Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, Calif., in a news release. “We cannot put our heads in the sand on these issues.”
The annual wage in sectors where jobs were lost, particularly in manufacturing and construction, during the recession was $61,637, but the average wage of new jobs through the second quarter of 2014 is $47,131, the report shows.
It represents a loss of $93 billion in wages, according to the report.
U.S. Navy Bombing American-Made Equipment in Iraq
August 12th, 2014Via: Defense News:
When the Iraqi Army’s 2nd Division broke and fled ahead of the advancing columns of ISIL fighters near Mosul earlier this summer, they left behind a treasure trove of US supplied military equipment that the jihadists have since turned on the civilian population.
Among the spoils were hundreds of Humvees, small arms and ammunition, and as many as 52 American M198 howitzer mobile gun systems – the same guns that two US Navy F/A-18s likely pounded with 500 lb. laser guided bombs on Friday.
The mobile gun systems were in range of the city of Irbil, which president Obama said on Thursday night that the United States would fight to protect, as about 40 US military personnel are there manning a joint operations center with Iraqi forces, along with American diplomats and civilians working at the consulate there.
The powerful US-made 155mm gun has a range of about 20 miles, putting quite a bit of distance between the shooter and their intended target — in this case the city of Irbil. President Obama on Thursday night gave the green light for strikes anywhere in Iraq where US citizens were in danger, so CENTCOM commander Gen. Lloyd Austin gave the order to strike on Friday when it was determined that the city was in range of the guns.
The guns cost roughly half a million dollars each, and while it takes a substantial amount of training to use the weapon properly—it can fire two rounds a minute by a trained crew—it is still relatively simple enough that the jihadis have learned to lob shells with the system.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Colgate Total Ingredient Linked to Hormones, Cancer Spotlights FDA Process
August 12th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
The chemical triclosan has been linked to cancer-cell growth and disrupted development in animals. Regulators are reviewing whether it’s safe to put in soap, cutting boards and toys. Consumer companies are phasing it out. Minnesota voted in May to ban it in many products.
At the same time, millions of Americans are putting it in their mouths every day, by way of a top-selling toothpaste that uses the antibacterial chemical to head off gum disease — Colgate-Palmolive Co.’s Total.
Total is safe, Colgate says, citing the rigorous Food and Drug Administration process that led to the toothpaste’s 1997 approval as an over-the-counter drug. A closer look at that application process, however, reveals that some of the scientific findings Colgate put forward to establish triclosan’s safety in toothpaste weren’t black and white — and weren’t, until this year, available to the public.
Second Night of Rioting After Killing of Black Missouri Teen
August 12th, 2014Via: Reuters:
Police fired tear gas after rioting broke out for a second night in Ferguson, Missouri, despite calls on Monday for calm from the mother of a black teenager who was shot to death by police at the weekend.
Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson said officers were focused on dispersing the crowd, which was smaller than the night before, but were making arrests and reported being fired on at some locations.
“They are shooting at us now,” Jackson said, adding that officers from 10 to 15 jurisdictions were assisting Ferguson.
Michael Brown, 18, was shot to death in Ferguson, a mostly black St Louis suburb, on Saturday afternoon after what police said was a struggle with a gun in a police car. The FBI has opened a probe into the racially charged case.
Brown’s family has hired Benjamin Crump, the attorney who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who was shot to death by a community watch volunteer in 2012.
Police in riot gear fired tear gas to disperse a crowd estimated in the hundreds gathered near a building that burned during Sunday night’s rioting, he said.
“Ample Evidence” Silicon Valley Firms Engaged in “An Overarching Conspiracy” Against Their Own Employees
August 11th, 2014Via: New York Times:
There is “ample evidence” that Silicon Valley was engaged in “an overarching conspiracy” against its own employees, a federal judge said on Friday, and it should either pay dearly or have its secrets exposed at trial.
Judge Lucy H. Koh of the United States District Court in San Jose rejected as insufficient a proposed $324 million settlement in a class-action antitrust case that accused leading tech companies of agreeing not to poach one another’s engineers.
In addition, her decision immediately resuscitated a public relations nightmare for Google, Apple and other top tech companies while vindicating a range of observers — including one of the plaintiffs in the suit — who said Silicon Valley was escaping justice.
With the case once again heading to trial, it threatens to expose to further scrutiny the business practices of Steve Jobs of Apple. The blunt emails of Mr. Jobs, an unquestioned genius, could prove to be his company’s undoing.
The Music Industry Is Brainwashing People to Like Bad Pop Songs
August 11th, 2014Via: mic.com:
After a couple dozen unintentional listens, many of us may find ourselves changing our initial opinions about a song — eventually admitting that, really, Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” isn’t as awful as it sounds. PBS’ Idea Channel’s Mike Rugnetta explains, it’s akin to a musical “Stockholm syndrome,” a term used originally by criminologist Nils Bejerot to describe a phenomenon in which victims of kidnapping may begin to sympathize with their captors over time.
The New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One
August 11th, 2014Ah yes, NSA as computer security philanthropist…
Via: Vice:
Hey, web developer dudes and dudettes: What’s your favorite programming language? Is it CSS? Is it JavaScript? Is it PHP, HTML5, or something else? Why choose? A new programming language developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University is all of those and more—one of the world’s first “polyglot” programming languages.
Sound cool? It is, except its development is partially funded by the National Security Agency, so let’s look at it with a skeptical eye.
It’s called Wyvern—named after a mythical dragon-like thing that only has two legs instead of four—and it’s supposed to help programmers design apps and websites without having to rely on a whole bunch of different stylesheets and different amalgamations spread across different files:
“Web applications today are written as a poorly-coordinated mishmash of artifacts written in different languages, file formats, and technologies. For example, a web application may consist of JavaScript code on the client, HTML for structure, CSS for presentation, XML for AJAX-style communication, and a mixture of Java, plain text configuration files, and database software on the server,” Jonathan Aldrich, the researcher developing the language, wrote. “This diversity increases the cost of developers learning these technologies. It also means that ensuring system-wide safety and security properties in this setting is difficult.”
That system-wide safety and security properties bit is important, and perhaps might explain why the project is backed by the NSA.
