North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il Dead
December 19th, 2011Via: Reuters:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack while on a train trip, state media reported Monday, sparking immediate concern over who is in control of the reclusive state and its nuclear program.
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South Korea, still technically at war with the North, placed its troops and all government workers on emergency alert, Yonhap news agency reported. But Seoul’s Defense Ministry said there were no signs of any unusual North Korean troop movements.
Homeland Security: Paying with Cash?:
December 19th, 2011Paying with cash, eh?
Via: YouTube:
Contributions from American Expatriates to Ron Paul’s Presidential Campaign
December 19th, 2011FYI for American expatriates: If you want to contribute money to Ron Paul’s campaign, here’s what you need to do. Send an email to Finance Director, John McCardell (johnm@ronpaul2012.com) stating that you are an American citizen living abroad, then call him at 703-563-6130.
Egypt Intensifies Crackdown on Street Protesters
December 19th, 2011WARNING: EXTREME VIOLENCE.
Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
Egypt’s military rulers escalated a bloody crackdown on street protesters over the weekend, chasing down and beating unarmed civilians, even while the Prime Minister was denying in a televised news conference that soldiers were using any force.
In a highly incendiary development, video cameras captured soldiers stripping the clothes off women they were beating on the pavement of Tahrir Square.
The contradiction in the military-led government’s statements and actions appeared to represent a shift in strategy by the military council.
After trying for months to preserve some credibility and collaboration with the political elite, the ruling generals on Saturday scarcely acknowledged the demands made by their newly appointed civilian advisory council that the military cease its violence and apologise to demonstrators.
Instead, as the crackdown entered its second day, the military council appeared to be playing to those Egyptians impatient with the continuing protests and eager for a return to stability.
”The military council is responsible for everything that happens,” Ziad el-Elaimy, a newly elected member of parliament who was beaten by the military police, said in a television interview.
Breakthrough Could Double Solar Energy Output
December 18th, 2011Via: Science Daily:
The efficiency of conventional solar cells could be significantly increased, according to new research on the mechanisms of solar energy conversion led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin.
Zhu and his team have discovered that it’s possible to double the number of electrons harvested from one photon of sunlight using an organic plastic semiconductor material.
“Plastic semiconductor solar cell production has great advantages, one of which is low cost,” said Zhu, a professor of chemistry. “Combined with the vast capabilities for molecular design and synthesis, our discovery opens the door to an exciting new approach for solar energy conversion, leading to much higher efficiencies.”
Zhu and his team published their groundbreaking discovery Dec. 16 in Science.
The maximum theoretical efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is approximately 31 percent, because much of the sun’s energy hitting the cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of “hot electrons,” is instead lost as heat. Capturing hot electrons could potentially increase the efficiency of solar-to-electric power conversion to as high as 66 percent.
Google Wallet Stores Some Payment Card Data In Plain Text
December 17th, 2011Via: Dark Reading:
Google’s much-anticipated mobile payment application locally stores some sensitive user information unencrypted, such as a cardholder’s name, transaction dates, email address, and account balance, new research released today reveals.
Researchers from viaForensics tested the security of Google Wallet — which lets consumers transact credit-card charges, redeem gift cards, and use loyalty membership cards in stores from their phones — on rooted Android smartphones and found that the app leaves sensitive data in the clear. While Google Wallet hides the full credit-card account number, the last four digits reside in plain text in the app’s local SQLite database.
The good news is that viaForensics confirmed that the app does repel man-in-the-middle attacks, and is protected by a PIN to conduct transactions with the cards.
But the apps’ SQLite databases resident on the Android phones included credit-card balance, limit, expiration date, cardholder name, and transaction locations and dates — information that viaForensics says could be used, for example, as a way to social-engineer the actual credit-card account from the cardholder.
UMG Claims “Right to Block or Remove” YouTube Videos it Doesn’t Own
December 17th, 2011Via: Ars Technica:
Universal Music Group has responded to Megaupload’s request for a temporary restraining order barring the music giant from further interference with the distribution of its “Mega Song.” UMG insists that it had a right to take down the video—not under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as Megaupload had assumed, but under a private contractual arrangement between UMG and YouTube.
UMG’s filing raises more questions than it answers. Most obviously, the firm has not explained why it took down the video in the first place. But the filing also raises deeper questions about UMG’s effort to essentially opt out of the DMCA takedown rules. UMG seems to believe it can take down videos even if it doesn’t hold the copyright to them, and that when UMG takes a video down from YouTube, the owner of that video can’t avail herself of even the weak protections against takedown abuse provided by the DMCA.
Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
December 17th, 2011Via: Network World:
As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report.
These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video and mine it at their leisure, according to “Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government,” written by John Villaseno, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA.
That will enable shadowing people’s movements and communications that took place before the individuals became suspects, he says.
“For example, if an anti-regime demonstrator previously unknown to security services is arrested, it will be possible to go back in time to scrutinize the demonstrator’s phone conversations, automobile travels, and the people he or she met in the months and even years leading up to the arrest,” the report says.
“These enormous databases of captured information will create what amounts to a surveillance time machine. … This will fundamentally change the dynamics of dissent, insurgency and revolution,” the report says.
Villaseno draws on knowledge gained from recent overthrows of such authoritarian regimes to support his argument that such a scenario is not just possible but likely. He notes that when the government of Libya fell, insurgents found equipment that had captured 30 million to 40 million minutes of phone conversations per month and enabled the government to read activist emails. There have been reports that the government of Syria wants to build communications intercepts as well, he says.
Related: NSA Building 1.5 Million Square Foot Data Center
Sprint Orders All OEMs to Strip Carrier IQ from Their Hardware
December 17th, 2011Via: geek.com:
In an attempt to distance themselves from the increasingly volatile Carrier IQ situation, we’ve been told that Sprint has ordered that all of their hardware partners remove the Carrier IQ software from Sprint devices as soon as possible.
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Sources at HTC have told us that, as a result of the lawsuits targeting Carrier IQ, Sprint, and other CIQ-using OEMs, Sprint has asked all of their partners to get rid of Carrier IQ. Starting with the high-volume and high-profile devices on the network, each of the OEM’s has been asked to quickly release binaries that do not contain Carrier IQ so that over-the-air updates can be pushed to those devices as quickly as possible. The eventual plan is to remove Carrier IQ from all of the devices on Sprint’s network.
SEC Charges Ex-Fannie, Freddie CEOs with Fraud
December 17th, 2011Ya think?
Via: AP:
Two former CEOs at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Friday became the highest-profile individuals to be charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis.
In a lawsuit filed in New York, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil fraud charges against six former executives at the two firms, including former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron.
The executives were accused of understating the level of high-risk subprime mortgages that Fannie and Freddie held just before the housing bubble burst.
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was,” said Robert Khuzami, SEC’s enforcement director.
Khuzami noted that huge losses on their subprime loans eventually pushed the two companies to the brink of failure and forced the government to take them over.
