Internet Firms Co-Opted for Surveillance
October 2nd, 2011Via: Reuters:
Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week.
…
Demands from governments for Internet companies to hand over user information have become routine, according to online privacy researcher and activist Christopher Soghoian, who makes extensive use of freedom-of-information requests in his work.
“Every decent-sized U.S. telecoms and Internet company has a team that does nothing but respond to requests for information,” Soghoian told Reuters in an interview.
Soghoian estimates that U.S. Internet and telecoms companies may receive about 300,000 such requests in connection with law enforcement each year — but public information is scarce.
While U.S. courts are obliged to publish reports on wire-tapping of telephone lines, no similar information is required to be made public with respect to the Internet — which grew up after the laws on electronic communications were passed.
…
The ease and cost of surveillance are at an all-time low, Soghoian said, with Google charging an administrative fee of $25 to hand over data, Yahoo charging $20, and Microsoft and Facebook providing data for free.
“Now, one police officer from the comfort of their desk can track 20, 30, 50 people all through Web interfaces provided by mobile companies and cloud computing companies,” he said.
“The marginal cost of surveilling one more person is now essentially approaching zero.”
Britain: Sharp Rise in Demand for Food Handouts from Poverty-Stricken Families
October 2nd, 2011Via: Guardian:
Britain has seen a sharp increase in the number of people unable to afford to feed themselves at the most basic level, thanks to the worsening economic climate and changes to the benefit system, according to a survey by a leading food charity.
In the past year FareShare, which redistributes waste food from major food manufacturers and supermarkets to social care charities, has seen a 20% rise in the number of people it is feeding – from 29,500 a year to 35,000.
And many of those, blighted by rising unemployment and business failures, are coming from the sorts of stable family backgrounds once considered immune to the worst effects of recession.
More:
Poverty-Stricken Families Join a Lengthening Queue for Food Handouts
20% of British Employees Are Earning Less Than a Living Wage
Ministers Plan Big Rise in Use of Electronic Tags on Offenders [h/t noncompliant]
New Fast and Furious Documents
October 1st, 2011Via: CBS:
Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.
The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell – who led Fast and Furious – and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.
ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.
The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as “letting guns walk.”
A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: “none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to ‘walk.'”
Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an “arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.” The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.
In response, O’Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 “The arrow chart is really interesting – and – no surprise – implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year’s TX effort develop a similar graphic?”
The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of “significant confidentiality interests.”
Germany Must Hit the Eject Button
October 1st, 2011Absent significant monetary instability or an injunction for use of bancor for the making of an important set of payments (e.g. payment of taxes), surmounting the barriers to wide acceptance would be a key and perhaps prohibitive challenge.
—IMF on the Proposed Global Currency Called the Bancor, Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability, April 13, 2010
There is serious trouble ahead.
Via: Stratfor / Business Spectator:
It seems that if the eurozone is to be saved, Greece needs to be disposed of.
This cannot, however, be done cleanly.
Boston Dynamics’ AlphaDog Quadruped Robot Prototype
October 1st, 2011Via: ieee Spectrum:
…those weights that AlphaDog is carrying in a few of the clips weigh a total of 400 pounds (180 kilograms), and the robot will be able to carry that load up to 20 miles (30 kilometers) over the course of 24 hours without having to refuel.
Sunlight Falling On Catalyst-Coated Silicon Wafer Splits Water Into Hydrogen and Oxygen
October 1st, 2011This is nowhere near viable, but it’s definitely interesting.
Via: Massachusetts Institute of Technology / YouTube:
An “artificial leaf” made by Daniel Nocera and his team, using a silicon solar cell with novel catalyst materials bonded to its two sides, is shown in a container of water with light (simulating sunlight) shining on it. The light generates a flow of electricity that causes the water molecules, with the help of the catalysts, to split into oxygen and hydrogen, which bubble up from the two surfaces.
More: Nature News: Secrets of Artificial Leaf Revealed
Japan: Kan Considered Evacuation of Tokyo in Wake Nuclear Disaster, but Feared Chaos and Collapse of the State
September 30th, 2011Via: ABC:
Japan’s former prime minister Naoto Kan has revealed he contemplated evacuating as many as 30 million people from Tokyo and surrounding areas during the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Speaking to Japan’s Kyodo News, Mr Kan, who was prime minister during the nuclear crisis, said evacuations on such a scale may have led to Japan being unable to function.
Mr Kan has since resigned from the prime ministership and can now speak more openly about the crisis.
He said he asked experts for “simulations of the worst case scenario” at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
He said the experts explained that people living 200 to 250 kilometres from the plant would have to be evacuated.
He said he contemplated the chaos that would have ensued if such a measure had been taken.
”It was a crucial moment when I wasn’t sure whether Japan could continue to function as a state,” he said.
”I felt that the risk was at its highest during the first 10 days [after the disaster struck].”
Mr Kan also said there were no effective safeguards in place because ”we had never foreseen a situation in which a quake, tsunami and a nuclear plant accident would occur at the same time.”
Police Device Used To Steal Your Cell Phone Data During Traffic Stop
September 30th, 2011Via: AOL Autos:
You may have heard about the Cellebrite cell phone extraction device (UFED) in the news lately. It gives law enforcement officials the ability to access all the information on your cell phone within a few short minutes. When it became known that Michigan State Police had been using the tool to access cell phones during traffic stops, it raised concern with the ACLU. Now, everyone is wondering if cops will be using devices like this elsewhere. Will this new law enforcement tool be abused, or will it be used responsibly in the pursuit of justice?
Call us paranoid, but we obtained a law-enforcement-grade software extraction tool for the iPhone to see exactly what data is up for grabs. You’d be surprised to see just how much data today’s smartphones can store — and police can access.
A Form of ‘Neo-Stagflation’ Has Emerged
September 30th, 2011Via: Globe and Mail:
This neo-stagflation is characterized by rising prices for food, fuel and metals – which were also key drivers in the 1970s stagflationary spiral.
“An OECD economic cycle in which prices of foods, fuels and precious metals rise far more strongly than prices of manufactured goods – or workers’ wages – is inherently stagflationary,” he wrote in a recent report. “A greater and greater share of total consumer spending goes to the commodity producers who own the farmland, the mines or the oil wells. The industrial and service-based economies find they cannot deliver the kind of strong, sustained, low-inflation economic growth that was the pattern for most of the postwar era.”
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