At Newark Airport, the Lights Are On, and They’re Watching You
February 23rd, 2014Via: New York Times:
Visitors to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport may notice the bright, clean lighting that now blankets the cavernous interior, courtesy of 171 recently installed LED fixtures. But they probably will not realize that the light fixtures are the backbone of a system that is watching them.
Using an array of sensors and eight video cameras around the terminal, the light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.
The project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.
…
The light fixtures are outfitted with special chips and connect to sensors, cameras and one another over a wireless network. Data that is collected — say, a particular car pulling up to the terminal — can then be mined and analyzed for a broad range of applications. Systems like the Port Authority’s, developed by a company called Sensity Systems, could soon be more widely available. Under a recent agreement, Amerlux, a leading lighting manufacturer, will start using the technology in its LED fixtures.
“We are opening up an entirely new area in lighting applications and services,” said Chuck Campagna, Amerlux’s chief executive, “including video-based security and public safety, parking management, predictive maintenance and more.”
Other companies, including giants like Cisco Systems and Philips, are racing to grab a share of that market.
Las Vegas is testing a street lighting system that can broadcast sound, and plans to use it mainly to control lighting and play music or to issue security alerts at a pedestrian mall.
St. Mary’s College Considers Basing President’s Salary Off That of Cleaning Staff
February 22nd, 2014My position on this is here.
Via: Washington Post:
How much should a college president make compared to the worker who cleans his office?
According to a proposal put forward by students and faculty at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, the answer is: no more than 10 times as much.
On Thursday afternoon, the faculty senate will review this proposal to tie the president’s salary to that of the school’s lowest-paid employees. Such workers at the public liberal arts college currently make $24,500 a year, which would translate into a $245,000 salary cap for the president — roughly $80,000 less than Ian Newbould, the college’s interim president, presently makes.
The move comes at a time of budget difficulties for the college, which lost roughly $3.5 million in expected tuition this academic year when it failed to fill enrollment numbers for its freshman class. It also comes at a time when higher-ed costs are ballooning across the United States and when executive pay is under increased scrutiny. This fall, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to propose a rule requiring companies to disclose the ratio of CEO pay compared to their median worker’s. In 2012, according to the Economic Policy Institute, that ratio was 273-1.
This Man’s $600,000 Facebook Disaster Is a Warning for All Small Businesses
February 22nd, 2014I figured this out after blowing only $10 on Facebook advertising. It’s incredible that companies are wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on this breathtaking scam.
Via: Business Insider:
Recently, however, Brar has fallen out of love with Facebook. He discovered — as Business Insider reported recently — that his Facebook fanbase was becoming polluted with thousands of fake likes from bogus accounts. He can no longer tell the difference between his real fans and the fake ones. Many appear fake because the users have so few friends, are based in developing countries, or have generic profile pictures.
At one point, he had a budget of more than $600,000 for Facebook ad campaigns, he tells us. Now he believes those ads were a waste of time.
Facebook declined multiple requests for comment on this story.
Brar’s take is a cautionary one because Facebook has 25 million small businesses using its platform for one marketing purpose or another. Many of them are not sophisticated advertisers — they are simply plugging a credit card number into the system and hoping for the best. This is what can happen if you don’t pay careful attention to contract language, or the live, real-time results your campaigns on Facebook are having.
Related: Company Finds Facebook Advertising Results in Clickthroughs That Are 80% Bots
New Jet-Powered Drone Can Kill 1,800 Miles From Home Base
February 22nd, 2014Via: Wired:
The Avenger (formerly Predator C), whose prototype flew its first flight in 2009, is operationally ready after a new round of tests completed last month, according to its maker, General Atomics. Based on the company’s more well-known MQ-9 Reaper drone, Avenger is designed to perform high-speed, long-endurance surveillance or strike missions, flying up to 500 mph at a maximum of 50,000 feet for as long as 18 hours.
Compared to its earlier prototype, Avenger’s fuselage has been increased by four feet to accommodate larger payloads and more fuel, allowing for extended missions. It can carry up to 3,500 pounds internally, and its 66-foot wingspan is capable of carrying weapons as large as a 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM).
Precipice Moon and BrewStick
February 22nd, 2014Long time Cryptogon reader and supporter Dale Ellis sent me a complementary download code for his album, Precipice Moon. (Also on Amazon.)
Woh.
Do yourself a favor and grab the FLAC files for this one. Note: If you get it from Amazon, I don’t think FLAC files are available.
Dale also has a Kickstarter going for his BrewStick, which allows home brewers to quickly estimate quantities of liquid in their carboys.
“Or, maybe nothing, and this is all a coincidence.”
February 22nd, 2014Via: Daring Fireball:
According to slide 6 in the leaked PowerPoint deck on NSA’s PRISM program, Apple was “added” in October 2012.
These three facts prove nothing; it’s purely circumstantial. But the shoe fits.
Sure would be interesting to know who added that spurious line of code to the file. Conspiratorially, one could suppose the NSA planted the bug, through an employee mole, perhaps. Innocuously, the Occam’s Razor explanation would be that this was an inadvertent error on the part of an Apple engineer. It looks like the sort of bug that could result from a merge gone bad, duplicating the goto fail; line.
Once in place, the NSA wouldn’t even have needed to find the bug by manually reading the source code. All they would need are automated tests using spoofed certificates that they run against each new release of every OS. Apple releases iOS, the NSA’s automated spoofed certificate testing finds the vulnerability, and boom, Apple gets “added” to PRISM. (Wasn’t even necessarily a fast turnaround — the NSA could have discovered the vulnerability over the summer, while iOS 6 was in developer program beta testing.)
Or, maybe nothing, and this is all a coincidence.
Ukraine: President’s Kiev Offices Abandoned
February 22nd, 2014Via: BBC:
Ukrainian protesters have been able to enter the president’s official and residential buildings in Kiev, after they were abandoned by police.
They have stationed guards outside the entrances to offices, while the interior ministry has said in a statement that it supports the people.
President Viktor Yanukovych’s aides say he is in Kharkhiv, close to Russia.
The opposition have called for elections before 25 May, earlier than envisaged in Friday’s peace deal.
…
The BBC’s Kevin Bishop in Kiev says journalists and protesters were able to enter freely the previously heavily guarded presidential complex on Saturday morning.
The protesters have not entered the offices themselves. They said they were protecting the buildings from looting and vandalism.
“He’s not here, none of his officials or anyone linked directly to the administration are here,” said Ostap Kryvdyk, a protest leader, referring to the president.
Correspondents say police appear to have abandoned posts across the city, while the numbers gathered in Independence Square – known as the Maidan – are growing.
Hundreds of people have also entered the grounds of the president’s official residence, the Mezhyhirya, about 15km (10 miles) north of the city centre.
Reporter Claims Computer Self Deleted Text While He Tried to Write Book About Snowden
February 22nd, 2014My first question would be: Was the system really offline?
Was he using a computer with a wi-fi network adapter (pretty much any laptop made in the last decade)? If yes, then it’s probably safe to assume that he wasn’t actually offline. Whatever rootkit was running on the system could simply turn on the wi-fi radio and make it connect to the spook’s wi-fi access point conveniently installed within range of the computer.
If the computer had no wi-fi or ethernet interfaces, or if it had just ethernet but wasn’t plugged into the network, that’s potentially a much weirder situation.
As for TrueCrypt, that’s not going to do anything against an attacker who has rooted the computer. Once you type your passphrase on a compromised machine, 1) all the data is decrypted and accessible to the attacker during the session and 2) the attacker, who is no doubt logging keystrokes, has your passphrase to use at more convenient times, like when you’re not sitting in front of the computer.
Via: Guardian:
Such moments may, of course, have an innocent explanation. Still, back at my home in Hertfordshire I took a few precautions. I worked offline. I stored each draft chapter in a TrueCrypt folder, a virtual encrypted disk accessible only via a long, complicated password. When I conducted interviews I left my mobile behind. Having seen Snowden’s documents, I knew something of the NSA’s and GCHQ’s extraordinary capabilities. As of April 2013, the US spy agency had 117,675 active surveillance targets. Was I perhaps now one of them?
By September the book was going well – 30,000 words done. A Christmas deadline loomed. I was writing a chapter on the NSA’s close, and largely hidden, relationship with Silicon Valley. I wrote that Snowden’s revelations had damaged US tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened. The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.
Over the next few weeks these incidents of remote deletion happened several times. There was no fixed pattern but it tended to occur when I wrote disparagingly of the NSA. All authors expect criticism. But criticism before publication by an anonymous, divine third party is something novel. I began to leave notes for my secret reader. I tried to be polite, but irritation crept in. Once I wrote: “Good morning. I don’t mind you reading my manuscript – you’re doing so already – but I’d be grateful if you don’t delete it. Thank you.” There was no reply.
A month later the mysterious reader – him, her, they? – abruptly disappeared. At a literary event in Berlin my Guardian colleague David Leigh told a journalist about my unusual computer experiences; he led with the anecdote in a piece for the leftwing daily Taz. After that, nothing. I finished The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man in December.
In idle moments I wonder who might have been my surreptitious editor. An aggrieved analyst at the NSA’s Fort Meade spy city? GCHQ? A Russian hacker? Someone else intent on mischief? Whoever you are, what did you think of my book? I’d genuinely like to know.
Research Credit: P7y845W4
Chevron Gives Residents Near Fracking Explosion Free Pizza
February 21st, 2014Via: Newsweek:
After a Chevron hydraulic fracturing well exploded in rural Dunkard Township, Pennsylvania, last Tuesday, and burned for four days straight, the energy company knew just the way to soothe nearby residents: free pizza.
Greece Intercepts Israeli Arms Shipments to Iran
February 21st, 2014Your what hurts?
Via: Telegraph:
Israeli arms dealers twice tried to send spare parts for fighter planes to Iran, The Telegraph has established, flouting an international arms embargo and openly contradicting the bitter enmity between the Jewish state and the Islamic regime.
The illegal shipments are now being investigated by the US Homeland Security Department after they were intercepted by authorities in Greece.
