Southwest Airlines Employee Finds Human Heads on Their Way to Fort Worth
June 18th, 2010The company that shipped the heads had its business license revoked. Is this strange?
Via: NBC:
A Southwest Airlines employee called police after finding human heads in a package set to be transported to a Fort Worth medical research company, the airline said.
“It wasn’t labeled or packaged properly,” said Ashley Rogers, a Southwest spokeswoman. “They called the local authorities.”
The incident happened in Little Rock, Ark., last Wednesday, she said.
Little Rock police turned the package over to the county coroner, who questions where they came from and if they were properly obtained.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that there is a black market out there for human body parts for research or for whatever reason,” said Pulaski County coroner Garland Camper. “We just want to make sure these specimens here aren’t a part of that black market and underground trade.”
The heads were being transported to the Fort Worth office of Medtronic, a leading medical research and technology company based in Minnesota.
Medtronic spokesman Brian Henry said it is common to ship body parts for medical education and research, but he said it is rare for a shipment to be seized.
“We expect our suppliers to follow proper procedures,” he said.
Camper described the items as 40 to 60 human heads.
But Henry said they were “four full cranial specimens and 40 pairs of temporal bone ear blocks.”
He identified the supplier as JLS Consulting of Wynne, Ark.
JLS’s business license was revoked in December, according to the Arkansas Secretary of State’s online database.
Company founder Janice Hepler did not return phone calls Wednesday. Her voice mail indicated it was full and no longer accepting messages.
But in an earlier interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, she blamed the problem on the private courier she had hired to transport the body parts.
“Nothing is wrong,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “We’re providing the documentation.”
But the coroner said the paperwork has “discrepancies.”
Federal law generally prohibits the sale of human body parts, although suppliers can be reimbursed for expenses in cases of legitimate medical education or research.
“It is a lucrative business. There is money to be made,” Camper said. “We’re hoping that this isn’t the case.”
$99 Fuel Cell for Small Electronic Devices
June 17th, 2010Via: Horizon Fuel Cell:
The miniPAK portable electronic device charger is designed to meet the needs of users who want more portable energy in one package, at a lower cost than existing rechargeable or disposable battery-based options.
The MiniPAK portable electronic device charger is a palm-size universal portable power charger and power extender for ANY electronic device requiring up to 3W of power. Devices compatible with the MiniPak include cellphones, but also smartphones, gaming devices, GPS handhelds, small lighting devices and MP3 players. The MiniPAK device integrates a passive air-breathing fuel cell and a “solid-state” hydrogen storage unit. The MiniPak DC power output is 2.5W (5V, 400mA), delivered through standard micro-USB port and a multi-choice cable. The device is supplied with 2 refillable and ready to use solid state hydrogen cartridge.While a cartridge replacement and filling infrastructure develops, Horizon took the extra step to develop a home refueling sytem called “HydroFILL” – sold as a separate accessory for added convenience. The MiniPAK is positioned to address gaps in providing energy “on the go” to power-hungry device users, as well as a low cost energy storage option for emergency and long duration off-grid power users.
More: At Last! An Affordable, Portable, Pocket-Sized Personal Fuel Cell
Around 300,000 People Displaced Inside Kyrgyzstan
June 17th, 2010Via: CNN:
About 300,000 people are now estimated to be internally displaced in Kyrgyzstan by ethnic violence, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday, citing information from the Kyrgyz interim government and non-governmental organizations.
Families and host communities were sheltering many of them, but at least 40,000 people were in need of shelter, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
New Claims for Unemployment Benefits Rise Sharply
June 17th, 2010Via: AP:
The number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped last week after three straight declines, another sign that the pace of layoffs has not slowed.
Initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 472,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the highest level in a month and overshadowed a report that consumer prices remain essentially flat.
Bank of America Ordered Traders: No Oil Deals with BP Beyond June 2011
June 16th, 2010Via: Reuters:
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has ordered its traders not to enter into oil trades with BP Plc that extend beyond June 2011, a market source familiar with the directive told Reuters.
The order to the bank’s traders came from a high-level executive and was made on Monday, according to a source familiar with it. It told traders not to engage in trade with BP for contracts beyond one year from this month.
The directive didn’t state a reason for the limit on longer-duration trades with the oil company, which comes as the British oil giant scrambles to stop an oil spill in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico for which it could eventually face billions of dollars in economic liabilities.
Limiting the duration of trades with a counterparty is one way in which banks can seek to protect themselves against risk that a company will be unable to meet its long-term obligations.
A BofA spokesman declined comment.
BP spokesman Toby Odone said the company doesn’t comment on market rumors or speculation.
Trillions in Resources & Funding Our Enemies
June 16th, 2010Via: David Degraw:
Wherever there is a war, look for CIA/IMF/private military war profiteers covertly funding and supporting BOTH sides in order to keep the wars raging and the profits rolling in. As former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell explained: “Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the US military machine to turn.”
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
June 16th, 2010Thank you.
CS £10
ST $60
zenc $20
NSA Whistleblower Used Hushmail to Communicate with Reporter
June 16th, 2010Absolutely no surprises here. At best, Hushmail is useless for communications where a state is the privacy attacker. At worst, it’s a purpose built honeypot.
See this one from 2007: Hushmail: Encrypted Email Provider Turns Over Clear Text Messages to Feds.
Via: Weekly Standard:
To communicate covertly with the Sun reporter, Drake opened up a Hushmail account and she apparently did the same. Hushmail is a web service that, as it advertises itself, “looks and feels just like any other web-mail site, but adds strong encryption to your emails to protect your secrets from prying eyes.”
Yet when the prying eyes are federal investigators, it turns out that Hushmail is not quite so secure. The indictment of Drake makes plain that the feds pierced Hushmail’s encryption either via technological or legal means, noting, among other things, that “defendant DRAKE scanned and emailed Reporter A electronic copies of certain classified and unclassified documents.”
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
GCHQ by Richard Aldrich
June 16th, 2010GCHQ by Richard Aldrich on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk
Via: Register:
If information indeed is power, then GCHQ is undoubtedly the closest thing the British government has to the Death Star.
As the historian Richard J Aldrich notes in the introduction to his excellent new history of the Cheltenham-based agency it represents by far our largest, most expensive, most productive – and yet most secret – intelligence effort. GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain’s most secret intelligence agency instantly ranks as the most essential exposition of the hidden power wielded for 70 years by Britain’s information superweapon.
Not that very many have attempted to complete a picture from the few, widely scattered puzzle pieces available. One can well believe Aldrich’s book is the result of the 10 years work claimed on its dust jacket.
Indeed, apart from its heroic beginnings at Bletchley Park during World War Two, GCHQ’s presence in the popular consciousness is limited to vague paranoia and some awareness that what it does is frightfully clever and terribly secret.
The agency’s success in maintaining not just its secrecy, but a helpfully low profile, is best demonstrated in the book by its exposition of the intimate relationship between GCHQ and the US’ National Security Agency (NSA).
How many appreciate that when politicians and journalists reflexively reference the “special relationship” between Westminster and Washington they are really talking about a Cold War bond originally forged between eavesdroppers in Cheltenham and Fort Meade, the Maryland base of the NSA? It’s a historical paradox that as the Empire was dismantled in the 1950s, Britain held its seat at the top table by dint of signals intelligence from vestigial remote territories such as Diego Garcia and Hong Kong.
Internet ‘Kill Switch’ Proposed for U.S.
June 16th, 2010Oh sure.
Via: ZDnet:
A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.
The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.
That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to “preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people,” Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.
Due to there being few limits on the US President’s emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.
TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group, said it was concerned about “unintended consequences that would result from the legislation’s regulatory approach” and “the potential for absolute power”. And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman Bill’s emergency powers “include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems.”
The idea of an internet “kill switch” that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia’s sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to “declare a cybersecurity emergency”, and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to “order the disconnection” of certain networks or websites.
On Thursday, both senators lauded Lieberman’s Bill, which is formally titled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. Rockefeller said “I commend” the drafters of the PCNAA. Collins went further, signing up at a co-sponsor and saying at a press conference that “we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realises the importance of protecting our cyber resources”.
Under PCNAA, the Federal Government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the internet, the telephone system or any other component of the US “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.
