|
US cops tried to erase online evidence of brutality
Google has been asked by a US law enforcement agency to remove several videos exposing police brutality from the video sharing service YouTube, the company has revealed in its latest update to an online transparency report. Another request filed by a different agency required Google to remove videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. The two requests were among 92 submissions for content removal by various authorities in the US filed between January and June 2011. Both were rejected by Google along with 27 per cent of the submissions. The IT giant says the overall number of requests for content removal it receives from governmental agencies has risen, and so has the number of requests to disclose the private data of Google users.
October 27th 2011
FBI To Record ALL Internet Talk Radio
-
 The Federal Bureau of Investigation is rolling tape.
-
-
The agency has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the internet. The FBI says it's not out to police the airwaves, but rather have access to what airs as potential evidence.
-
-
http://www.insideradio.com/
Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content
As many of you may have suspected, Israel is paying and training internet bloggers to delete, rewrite, and revise internet content to shape public opinion to Israel's benefit. Video of the Israeli-sponsored training programs have been leaked to the web (like the video here).
Chaos Computer Club: German gov't software can spy on citizens
By Bob Sullivan
 A well-regarded Germany-based hacker group claims a German government-created Trojan horse program is capable of secretly spying on Web users without their consent.
The group says on its websitethat it obtained and analyzed a piece of software that is supposed to be a "lawful interception" program designed to listen in on Internet-based phone calls as part of a legal wiretap, but its capabilities go far beyond legal bounds.
The program is capable of logging keystrokes, activating Webcams, monitoring Web users' activities and sending mountains of data to government officials, the club said.
To cover its tracks, the data is routed through rented servers located in the United States, the club alleges.
"To avoid revealing the location of the command and control server, all data is redirected through a rented dedicated server in a data center in the USA," the Club said on its website.
The German government has yet to comment on the findings, but already, antivirus companies are reacting to them. Security firm F-Secure will detect and disable the alleged government monitoring software if found on clients' computers, it announced on Saturday.
"Yes, it is possible the Trojan found by CCC is written by the German government. We just can't confirm that,” said Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure’s chief technology officer, via Twitter.
The program, labeled a "backdoor" because it can open a computer to surreptitious access, targets certain applications for keylogging, including Firefox, Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ and others, according to F-Secure.
"We do not know who created this backdoor and what it was used for," Hypponen wrote on F-Secure's blog. "(But) We have no reason to suspect CCC's findings."
The Globalist Empire Strikes Back With Censorship
In a telling act of desperation, the failing globalist empire, Google Blogger, completely deleted Activist Post, one of the top alternative news websites, without warning or reason. The elite see that their global fascist world government agenda is falling apart due to the alternative media educating the public. Globalist puppet Hillary Clinton recently told a congressional committee, “We are in an information war and we are losing that war.”
Why Google Earth Can't Show You Israel
Since Google launched its Google Earth feature in 2005, the company has become a worldwide leader in providing high-resolution satellite imagery. In 2010, Google Earth allowed the world to see the extent of the destruction in post-earthquake Haiti. This year, Google released similar images after Japan's deadly tsunami and earthquake. With just one click, Google can bring the world—and a better understanding of far-away events—to your computer.
There is one entire country, however, that Google Earth won't show you: Israel.
That's because, in 1997, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, one section of which is titled, "Prohibition on collection and release of detailed satellite imagery relating to Israel." The amendment, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, calls for a federal agency, the NOAA's Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs, to regulate the dissemination of zoomed-in images of Israel.
LEAKED: UK copyright lobby holds closed-door meetings with gov't to discuss national Web-censorship regime
 A group of UK copyright lobbyists held confidential, closed-door meetings with Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries to discuss a plan to allow industry groups to censor the Internet in the UK. The proposal has leaked, and it reveals a plan to establish "expert bodies" that would decide which websites British people were allowed to see, to be approved by a judge using a "streamlined" procedure. The procedure will allow for "swift" blocking in order to shut down streaming of live events.
Public interest groups like the Open Rights Group asked to attend the meeting, but were shut out, presaging a regulatory process that's likely to be a lopsided, industry-centric affair that doesn't consider the public. The process is characterised as "voluntary," but the proposal makes reference to the Digital Economy Act, which allows for mandatory web-blocking (thanks to the action of LibDem Lords who submitted a proposal written by a record industry lobbyist as an amendment to the DEA).
 The internet is increasingly becoming an echo chamber in which websites tailor information according to the preferences they detect in each viewer. When some users search the word “Egypt,” they may get the latest news about the revolution, others might only see search results about Egyptian vacations.
The top 50 websites collect an average of 64 bits of personal information each time we visit—and then custom-design their sites to conform to our perceived preferences. What impact will this online filtering have on the future of democracy? We speak to Eli Pariser, authorof The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You .
 In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.
Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.
White House unveils cyber ID proposal
 WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House unveiled a plan on Friday designed to boost confidence and business in cyberspace through the creation of a single, secure online credential.
"By making online transactions more trustworthy and better protecting privacy, we will prevent costly crime, we will give businesses and consumers new confidence, and we will foster growth and untold innovation," President Barack Obama said in a statement.
"That's why this initiative is so important for our economy," Obama said.
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) proposes the creation of secure and reliable online credentials that would be available to consumers who want to use them.
( Planted ? ) Computer glitch affects police, school computers
Networked computers around the world, including many in Kentucky state and local governments, were shut down Wednesday as a precaution against a glitch in a popular antivirus program.
The glitch apparently began with an update to McAfee security software for corporate customers, which is widely used in the state. The update, posted by the company at 9 a.m. Wednesday, identified a normal Microsoft Windows file as a virus, causing computers to continuously reboot.
Computers in Lexington's City Hall and police department, and in Kentucky public school districts and universities, were affected by the update, which was sent automatically to McAfee users.
As technicians scrambled to get fixes in place, officials were advised to turn off their systems. "Luckily, our pencils still worked," said Lisa Deffendall, spokeswoman for Fayette County public schools.
Deffendall said all 15,000 computers in the school system were shut down, but not before the glitch was downloaded onto nearly 2,700 machines. Technicians were at work repairing them by 4 p.m. Wednesday.
All Kentucky public schools were affected by the glitch because they use the same network, said Lisa Gross, Kentucky Education Department spokeswoman. A temporary solution was running by late afternoon, Gross said.
A release from Mayor Jim Newberry's office said that 125 computers — "9 percent" of the city's desktops — were affected, and that repairs were to continue through Wednesday night. LexCall and emergency calls to 911 were not affected.
Government Claims Unlimited Discretion to Look Through Your Laptop at the Border
 Last May, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents searched and took Pascal Abidor's laptop and external hard drive when he was returning home to New York City from Montreal, Canada, where he attends graduate school. When his laptop and hard drive were returned to him 11 days later, Abidor discovered agents had opened numerous files, including personal photographs, a transcript of a chat with his girlfriend, copies of email correspondence, class notes, journal articles, tax returns, his graduate school transcript, and his resume.
This past fall, we, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL) filed a suiton behalf of Abidor, the NACDL, and the National Press Photographers Association, challenging the government's policy of searching and keeping laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices at the border in the absence of any suspicion of wrongdoing. Today, we filed a brief asking the court to reject the government's attempt to dismiss our suit.
Spying on Internet Users
 The Department of Homeland Security is conducting massive spying on Internet users through a program called "Avatar Identity." The existence of the program was disclosed to WMR by a source who stated that the development of avatars for every user of the Internet had its beginnings with the U.S. Air Force and the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPANET) at the outset of the fielding of World Wide Web (WWW) technology in the early 1990s.
At the core of Homeland Security's Avatar Identity Program is the reliance on genetic algorithms developed for the analysis of the stock market to come up with prime investment strategies. The program was developed through the aegis of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), which inherited many of the invasive Internet surveillance programs from its Pentagon cousin, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA), after its programs, including the proposed Total Information Awareness program, were defunded by Congress
The Avatar Identity Program appears to coincide with another Air Force project to solicit "persona management software" to create virtual users on the Internet in order to conduct perception management campaigns to inundate chat rooms, letter to the editor, and on-line polls to sway public opinion on key issues.
Pay-as-you go meters will see internet users charged PER GIGABYTE
Canada set to introduce new billing system next month
 We have become accustomed to receiving unlimited access to the internet for a set monthly payment.
But all that is to change in Canada next month when people will have to pay for what they use with a new metering system.
The go-ahead for pay-as-you-go came last September when Canada's Radio-Telecommunications Commission ruled Bell Canada could implement the new system.
Bell, the country's largest telecommunications company, has now decided to take advantage of the decision which means that instead of a flat fee, subscribers will pay for content per gigabyte. Furthermore, there will be a limit to how much data can be downloaded.
The Internet Kill Switch: Made by Israeli security!
 It’s very much an American concern, in that a US-based company seems to be the maker of the Internet off-switch. As Tim Karr of Free Press notes, the US company Narus was founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts. Based in Sunnyvale California, Narus has devised what business fans call a “social media sleuth.”
As boosters put it: “Narus is the leader in real-time traffic intelligence for the protection and management of large IP networks…. Used by the world’s service providers and governments, Narus has developed and patented state-of-the art algorithms to detect network anomalies and manage unwanted IP traffic. Additionally, Narus has the unique ability to precision target and fully reconstruct all types of IP traffic, including e-mail, Web mail and instant messages.”
They call it “total visibility.” Who’s buying? Well, Egypt Telecom, the state-owned communications company. Human rights abusers Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are also clients. During Iran’s protests in 2009, dissidents were tracked, imprisoned and in some cases executed thanks to similar technology.
And in that Narus is owned by Boeing, the nominally US-based company that has outsourced jobs all over the world—we know that theUS State Department has been lobbying for them. Got to boost those exports!
Egypt shows how easily Internet can be silenced
 The move by Egyptian authorities to seal off the country almost entirely from the Internet shows how easily a state can isolate its people when telecoms providers are few and compliant.
In an attempt to stop the frenzied online spread of dissent against President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, not only Facebook and Twitter but the entire Internet was shut down overnight, leaving some 20 million users stranded.
Hundreds of service providers offer connections in Egypt, but just four own the infrastructure — Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr.
Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC, a European not-for-profit Internet infrastructure forum, says immature markets with few providers can achieve such shutdowns relatively easily.
"The more simple the topology is and the fewer Internet services providers there are, the easier it is for any government or the telco themselves to control access into any geographical area," he said.
"If you have a relatively diverse telecoms market and a very much meshed Internet topology then it's much more difficult to do than if you have the traditional telecoms structure of two decades ago and they control all the international connections
January 30th 2011
Social networking sites are a 'modern form of madness'
 The way in which people frantically communicate online via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook can be seen as a modern form of madness, according to the leading sociologist.
Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes in her new book, Alone Together: “A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological.”
She explains that people are become isolated from reality due to such social networking sites because technology is dominating our lives and making us "less human".
Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, technology is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world, she suggests.
“We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, yet we have allowed them to diminish us,” she writes.
Her warnings – and those from other cyber-sceptics – follow the death of Simone Back, a woman in Brighton who posted a suicide note on Facebook that was seen by more than 1,000 of her "friends".
Get Internet Access When Your Government Shuts It Down
 Even if you've managed to find an Internet connection for yourself, it won't be that helpful in reaching out to your fellow locals if they can't get online to find you. If you're trying to coordinate a group of people in your area and can't rely on an Internet connection, cell phones, or SMS, your best bet could be a wireless mesh network of sorts--essentially, a distributed network of wireless networking devices that can all find each other and communicate with each other. Even if none of those devices have a working Internet connection, they can still find each other, which, if your network covers the city you're in, might be all you need. At the moment, wireless mesh networking isn't really anywhere close to market-ready, though we have seen an implementation of the 802.11s draft standard, which extends the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard to include wireless mesh networking, in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop.
Egypt Shuts Down Internet And Text Messaging Ahead Of Million-Man Protests
 The Internet is reportedly down in Cairo and across Egypt, with users denied both online access and SMS access. The shut off comes just hours before planned protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian protesters have been particularly effective at utilizing social media to organize and mobilize—this past Tuesday's protest was largely arranged via Twitter. State officials have yet to comment on the lack of service
The Internet ID: Do we have any say in it?
It’s been called the "Trusted Internet ID" scheme by some observers. It won’t matter what we choose to call the government’s proposed Internet licensing system because in the end we probably won’t have a say in it.
Earlier in the week we reported that the US Department of Commerce was preparing to create an Internet ID for all Americans. White House Cyber security Coordinator Howard Schmidt said that the Department of Commerce is "the absolute perfect spot in the US government" to build an online "identity ecosystem."
Right off the bat I can tell you that attempting to force people to identify themselves on a national level doesn’t have much to do with the Department of Commerce’s official mission. We should all be feeling skeptical about this ID scheme.
Web Security Cams Are A Voyeur’s Delight: Is Your IP Cam Password Protected?
 Web security cams can be awfully insecure, finds Tom Connor in Ars Technica. Connor took a spin around the Web checking out live feeds from cameras focused on tennis courts, jewelry counters, aquariums, a doctor’s office, and a toy store. He was even able to tap into police cameras monitoring an intersection in Texas for red light runners. In most instances, these cameras were not meant to be offering live video for public consumption. So how did he hack in?
LIFE BEFORE THE WEB
 Before the Blog, there was a ‘soapbox’. Cindy Sheehan even calls her Blog Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox. And just what was a soapbox? It was literally just that, a soap box! They were set up in strategic spots in crowded areas, usually public parks. Union Square in New York was a popular place as was the Speakers Cornerin London’s Hyde Park. ‘Speakers’ mounted the box and spouted out their political or religious opinions to sometimes large crowds of people. There were usually the same people doing this day after day.
Today we can do this via our Blog or Website without ever meeting another human being face to face…..
Gerald Celente: Internet nuke bomb waiting to go off
Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans
 STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.
That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.
Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content
'Spy services feed info to whistleblowers to keep tabs on site visitors'
FCC caves on Net Neutrality
Is Wikileaks Endgame Internet Censorship?
 "A closer look at the details of what has so far been carefully leaked by the most ultra-establishment of international media such as the New York Times reveals a clear agenda. That agenda coincidentally serves to buttress the agenda of US geopolitics around the world from Iran to North Korea. It is almost too perfectly scripted to be true. A discontented 22-year old US Army soldier on duty in Baghdad, Bradley Manning, a low-grade US Army intelligence analyst, described as a loner, a gay in the military, a disgruntled "computer geek," sifts through classified information at Forward Operating Base Hammer. He decides to secretly download US State Department email communications from the entire world over a period of eight months for hours a day, onto his blank CDs while pretending to be listening to Lady Gaga
French piracy law allows banning websites without oversight
 The French National Assembly on Wednesday approved a section of a bill that would allow the government to filter Internet sites blacklisted by the Ministry of the Interior. Section 4 of the Bill Loppsi 2 will allow this without judge or jury intervention and is meant to reduce child pornography sites and cybercrime.According to Le Point, many of the sites are hosted by countries abroad, and the Ministry of the Interior will send the blacklist to ISPs in order to block them.
Some critics of the system believe the approach may wrongfully finger innocent sites and, without legal recourse, will effectively be knocked offline. They believe the parties involved need to go after the creators of illegal pornography rather than just block their sites. The approach in extreme cases could also be used by unscrupulous politicians to ban political enemies like Wikileaks or otherwise dissenting opinions, although this isn't considered probable so far.
Why do we let this creepy company called Google spy on our emails?
To many, the colourful home page of Google is the friendly face of the internet. Indeed, the company, which was created 12 years ago by two American PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, has always prided itself on its quirky presentation.
The hallways of the ‘Googleplex’ headquarters in California are stuffed with pianos, lava lamps, games and funky furniture for the enjoyment of staff, its webpage often features specially designed logos for days such as Halloween, Christmas and national festivals and – crucially – Google gives away its software for free.
Add to that its rather hippyish business principles (‘You can make money without doing evil’, ‘You can be serious without a suit’, ‘Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun’), its corporate philanthropy and its clashes with the Chinese government over free speech, and it is easy to see why Google is often regarded as a warm, fluffy ‘good guy’.
Patriot Act for Internet ahead?
Is the Internet 9/11 Under Way?
 Think about it. Where is this seemingly staged Wikileaks furor taking us? While we participate in digging into the juicy tidbits of information that incriminate just about anybody and everybody, where is it all going?
Lessons of 9/11
While 9/11 served as a wake up call to those awake and aware enough to see the obvious demolitions and misinformation and resultant "Pearl Harbor" effect, most of the world fell for it. And now people are literally bending over, as in airport 'screenings', to the onslaught of police state fascism worldwide. It's staggering. In fact, it's Orwellian. The armies, police and private sector are at war with the vague concept of terrorism - an unbeatable enemy in a war that can be drawn out indefinitely and fought in any arena necessary.
And what was the result of this declared war on terrorism? Not a war on terror, but an increase in fear and terror, all to justify the economic, social and political clampdown that has followed.
Congress Back To Censoring Internet
 Now that the elections are over, Congress can get back to the job of censoring the internet. The kerfuffle over the TSA taking naked pictures of you and/or giving you a groin pat-down has to come as a welcome voter distraction for those lawmakers bent on ramming S. 3804: Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) through Congress before voters even know what it is. Simply put, the COICA allows the government to keep “blacklists” of websites the government, in its sole discretion, decides are “dedicated to infringing activities.” The COICA does not require any hearing or judicial review, just “BAM” your website is gone. Not just the allegedly infringing material, not just the webpage upon which it appears, your entire website.
Watchdog Planned for Online Privacy
The Obama administration is preparing a stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a new position to oversee the effort, according to people familiar with the situation.
The strategy is expected to be unveiled in a report being issued by the U.S. Commerce Department in coming weeks, these people said. The report isn't yet final and could change, these people said.
In a related move, the White House has created a special task force that is expected to help transform the Commerce Department recommendations into policy, these people said. The White House task force, set up three weeks ago, is led by Cameron Kerry, the brother of Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Commerce Department general counsel, and ChristopherSchroeder, assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice
SocialMiner: New software allows employers to spy on Twitter, Facebook, social networks
New software released by Cisco Systems Inc. on Wednesday makes it much easier for banks, retailers, and other businesses -- including your employer -- to monitor the mountain of data on social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The new SocialMiner software tracks the status updates, forum posts, and blog posts of customers and potential customers in real-time, giving businesses immediate information about consumers' opinions and preferences. It's pretty cheap, too: "It can also be purchased for use with a non-Cisco contact center system, Cisco officials say. In each case, SocialMiner costs $1,000 for the server and $1,500 per agent license."
"With more and more Web-based conversations taking place over these social platforms, it's now more critical than ever that businesses are aware of what their customers are saying about them and are able to respond to general inquiries or rectify customer service issues so as to enhance and protect brand reputation," Cisco states in its SocialMiner press release.
According to The Nielsen Company, the average global consumer spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009.
November 30th Could Be the Day the Government Seizes Control of the Internet
 After two years of this Presidential Administration and this Congress, that is saying an awful lot about an awful lot.
And what’s worse, the FCC would be doing it without Congress weighing in. At the FCC’s November meeting – note the coincidental date of choice, AFTER the impending election – three unelected bureaucrats (of five) could simply vote themselves rulers of 1/6th of our entire economy – the information and technology sector.
Meaning the Internet that you currently enjoy – that has been a marvel of economic and information innovation and success – will be subject to vast new governmental regulations. You didn’t elect these people – but they are on the verge of electing themselves Internet overlords.
Google Alert: Google's Devilish Tax Deals Detailed in Bloomberg News Scoop
 The motto for those good Google guys out in Mountain View, CA. is "Don't be evil," but Bloomberg News today details how that pledge stops somewhere short of their tax returns. Bloomberg's Jesse Drucker explains how the world's most successful Internet search engine manages to cut its tax rate on its massive overseas profits by a sleight of hand worthy of a Times Square Three-Card Monte dealer (Ok, they don't have Three-Card Monte games in Times Square anymore, but they did. Just Google it.)
In UK, every email and website to be stored by government
 It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.
Moves to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state.The plans were shelved by the Labour Government last December but the Home Office is now ready to revive them.
It comes despite the Coalition Agreement promised to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason".Any suggestion of a central "super database" has been ruled out but the plans are expected to involve service providers storing all users details for a set period of time.
That will allow the security and police authorities to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public if they argue it is needed to tackle crime or terrorism.
The information will include who is contacting whom, when and where and which websites are visited, but not the content of the conversations or messages.
Congress Has Plans for an Internet Blacklist in the Works -- Let's Stop This Now
 When it really matters to them, Congressmembers can come together -- with a panache and wry wit you didn't know they had. As banned books week gets underway, and President Obama admonishes oppressive regimes for their censorship of the Internet, a group of powerful Senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have signed onto a bill that would vastly expand the government's power to censor the Internet.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in late September, but it's greased and ready to move, with a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday. If people don't speak out, US citizens could soon find themselves joining Iranians and Chinese in being blocked from accessing broad chunks of the public Internet.
How the Phone Companies Are Screwing America: The $320 Billion Broadband Rip-Off
 Since 1991, the telecom companies have pocketed an estimated $320 billion --- that's about $3,000 per household.
This is a conservative estimate of the wide-scale plunder that includes monies garnered from hidden rate hikes, depreciation allowances, write-offs and other schemes. Ironically, in 2009, the FCC's National Broadband plan claimed it will cost about $350 billion to fully upgrade America's infrastructure.
The principal consequence of the great broadband con is not only that Americans are stuck with an inferior and overpriced communications system, but the nation's global economic competitiveness has been undermined.
Google CEO: "We Know Where You Are. We Know Where You've Been. We Can More Or Less Know What You're Thinking About."
 Google CEO Eric Schmidt really has a knack for expressing relatively benign ideas in a way that makes him and his company look incredibly creepy.
The Atlantic has posted video of the full interview in which Eric talked about 'the creepy line', and it is chock full of unsettling sound bytes. In particular, he had the following to say on privacy:
With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about
October 7th 2010
Stop the Internet Blacklist
 When it really matters to them, Congressmembers can come together -- with a panache and wry wit you didn't know they had. As banned books week gets underway, and President Obama admonishes oppressive regimes for their censorship of the Internet, a group of powerful Senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have signed onto a bill that would vastly expand the government's power to censor the Internet.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced just one week ago, but it's greased and ready to move, with a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee this Thursday. If people don't speak out, US citizens could soon find themselves joining Iranians and Chinese in being blocked from accessing broad chunks of the public Internet.
Obama’s Internet Wiretap Move: Just One Small Facet Of Total Domination Project
 The Obama administration is drafting legislation that will see all internet providers and other online communication services, including email clients and social networks, be forced to allow the intelligence agencies unfettered backdoor access.
“Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.” The New York Times
U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet
 WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in "Online Infringement" Bill
 Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. The bill would also create two Internet blacklists. The first is a list of all the websites hit with a censorship court order from the Attorney General. The second, more worrying, blacklist is a list of domain names that the Department of Justice determines — without judicial review — are "dedicated to infringing activities." The bill only requires blocking for domains in the first list, but strongly suggests that domains on the second list should be blocked as well by providing legal immunity for Internet intermediaries and DNS operators who decide to block domains on the second blacklist as well. (It's easy to predict that there will be tremendous pressure for Internet intermediaries of all stripes to block these "deemed infringing" sites on the second blacklist
US lawmakers seek power to ‘shut down’ Web sites in other countries
 A bill introduced in the US Senate on Monday would give US law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.
The bill will give the Justice Department the "tools to track and shut down websites devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods," Leahy's office said.
The illegal products offered by websites, many of which are based outside of the United States, range from movies, television shows and music to pharmaceuticals and consumer products, it said in a statement
7,500Germans rally forgreater data privacy
Some 7,500 people demonstrated Saturday in Berlin to express their concerns about personal data privacy as the German government and private companies amass giant databases, organisers said.
Global ‘internettreaty’ proposed
The proposal was presented at the Internet Governance Forum in Lithuania last week, and outlined 12 “principles of internet governance”, including a commitment from countries to sustain the technological foundations that underpin the web’s infrastructure.
The draft law has been likened to the Space Treaty, signed in 1967, which stated that space exploration should be carried out for the benefit of all nations, and guaranteed “free access to all areas of celestial bodies”.
Will the Justice Department Be Authorized to Shut DInternet Sitesown ?
by Rich Muny
On September 20th, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced legislation — S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act — that seeks to give the Department of Justice the power to shut down websites anywhere in the world that are found to infringe on intellectual property rights. This would be accomplished by ordering U.S. domain registrars and registries to stop resolving infringing sites’ domain names. While this bill has the noble-sounding goal of preventing online piracy, handing the federal government authority over the Internet would set a troubling precedent that would imperil Internet freedom in America and across the world.
One disquieting issue is the lack of any requirement that these sites be found to violate the laws of the countries from where they operate. In fact, under this bill sites operating perfectly legally under the laws of their own nations could be shut down by the U.S. Justice Department.
Sergey Brin: “We Want Google To Be The Third Half Of Your Brain.”
The internet: is it changing the way we think?
Every 50 years or so, American magazine the Atlantic lobs an intellectual grenade into our culture. In the summer of 1945, for example, it published an essay by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineer Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think". It turned out to be the blueprint for what eventually emerged as the world wide web. Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?".
NSA: U.S. Must Secure the Internet
 According to National Security Agency (NSA) Director Gen. Keith Alexander, the United States federal government has the overarching duty and responsibility in securing the Internet to safeguard against cyber-criminal activities. Top military officials concurred with Alexander, but the government still has yet to provide details of how it intends to tackle Internet security issues. According to site Threat Post, Alexander "expressed confidence that the country's information security apparatus was up to the task, but acknowledged the difficulty of securing the Internet, a network that many security experts see as hopelessly broken and flawed by design."
The facial recognition software that will put a name to every photograph in the internet
software company is developing revolutionary software which provides the ability to identify people from photographs posted on the internet.
Face.com has produced technology that can identify individuals on social networking sites and online galleries by comparing their image against a known picture of them.
It means detailed profiles of individuals can be built up purely from online photographs and critics have said it could lead to exploitation by employers.
Spain investigates Google Street View wi-fi snooping
 Spain has become the latest country to launch an investigation into the collection of sensitive wi-fi data by Google.
Google has admitted that its Street View cars had "accidentally" collected data from unsecured wi-fi networks in more than 30 countries.
A Google representative has now been summoned to appear before a judge in Madrid on 4 October.
It is in response to a complaint by a privacy watchdog called Apedanica.
The Google representative has been summoned to explain what data was collected, how it was obtained and the number of people affected.
Obama demands access to Internet records without court review
 'Big Brother is watching you.' Yet another move toward a totalitarian government has secretly occurred that bears ominous signals for personal freedom.
Barack Obama is demanding access to the Internet records of average citizens, in secret, and without court review.
The Center for Research on Globalization reports the news:
"The Obama administration is seeking authority from Congress that would compel internet service providers (ISPs) to turn over records of an individual's internet activity for use in secretive FBI probes.
"In another instance where Americans are urged to trust their political minders, The Washington Post reported last month that "the administration wants to add just four words--'electronic communication transactional records'--to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval."
"Under cover of coughing-up information deemed relevant to espionage or terrorism investigations, proposed changes to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) would greatly expand the volume of private records that can be seized through National Security Letters (NSLs).
"Constitution-shredding lettres de cachet, NSLs are administrative subpoenas that can be executed by agencies such as the FBI, CIA or Defense Department, solely on the say so of supervisory agents.
The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty's computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.
The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tenn
The code knows that her favorite movies include "The Princess Bride," "50 First Dates" and "10 Things I Hate About You." It knows she enjoys the "Sex and the City" series. It knows she browses entertainment news and likes to take quizzes.
"Well, I like to think I have some mystery left to me, but apparently not!" Ms. Hayes-Beaty said when told what that snippet of code reveals about her. "The profile is eerily correct."
Ms. Hayes-Beaty is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a "beacon" to capture what people are typing on a website—their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person's name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Ms. Hayes-Beaty's tastes can be sold wholesale (a batch of movie lovers is $1 per thousand) or customized (26-year-old Southern fans of "50 First Dates").
"We can segment it all the way down to one person," says Eric Porres, Lotame's chief marketing officer.
One of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found, is the business of spying on Internet users.
Elite Cyber Group Comes Over Ground To Recruit Hackers
After more than a decade tracking Internet bad guys, a semi-secret government contractor has revealed itself to recruit hackers at a notorious DefCon security conference in Las Vegas.
Chet Uber, chief of Project Vigilant, an alliance 600 volunteers, has described the group as a sort of cyber "A-Team" taking on terrorists, drug cartels, mobsters and other enemies on the Internet.
"We do things the government can't," Uber said Sunday, adding: "This was never supposed to have been a public thing."
The semi-secret organization scours Internet traffic for clues about online attacks, terrorists, cartels and other targets rated as priorities by members of group.
Uber said that Vigilant came overground after 14 years of operation in a drive to be at "full capacity" by adding 1,750 "vetted volunteers" by the year 2012.
"We are good people not out to hurt anybody," the director of Fort Pierce, Fl.-based Project Vigilant said. "Our one oath is to defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic."
The democratically run private organization claims to monitor the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers (ISPs), and under a provision in their end user license agreements (EULAs) they are able to share users' Internet activities with third parties.
Obama’s War on the Internet
The Ministry of Truth was how George Orwell described the mechanism used by government to control information in his seminal novel 1984. A recent trip to Europe has convinced me that the governments of the world have been rocked by the power of the internet and are seeking to gain control of it so that they will have a virtual monopoly on information that the public is able to access. In Italy, Germany, and Britain the anonymous internet that most Americans are still familiar with is slowly being modified. If one goes into an internet café it is now legally required in most countries in the European Union to present a government issued form of identification
Censorship Alert: Obama Deception Illegally Removed from You Tube
Made to look like a hack, the anti-establishment documentary was blocked after a year of mega-viral viewing, ranking #1 in search engines and waking up millions to the false left-tight paradigm perpetuated by Obama.
Alex Jones is on high-alert after someone managed to compromise the "ChangeDaChannel" You Tube account and criminally remove the most-viewed version of The Obama Deception available online, which had more than 6.5 million views and whose URL link ranked among the top of all "Obama" related searches
The claim was made by leading advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog which wants Congress to hold hearings into what data Google's Street View possesses.
Google admitted it mistakenly collected information, transmitted over unsecured wireless networks, as its cars filmed locations for mapping purposes.
Google said the problem began in 2006.
The issue came to light when German authorities asked to audit the data.
The search giant said the snippets could include parts of an email, text, photograph, or even the website someone might be viewing.
"We think the Google Wi-Spy effort is one of the biggest wire tapping scandals in US history," John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog told BBC News.
Pers
It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman.
Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the “global war on terror” which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.
 Type the keywords “Internet censorship” into Google News and you will immediately understand to what degree the world wide web is under assault from attempts by governments globally to regulate and stifle free speech. From Australia to Belarus, from Turkey to Vietnam, from Pakistan to Egypt, from Afghanistan to Iran, huge chunks of the Internet are going dark as the Chinese model of Internet regulation is adopted worldwide.
But why should Americans concern themselves with countries halfway across the globe adopting Chinese-style net censorship? Because under Senator Joe Lieberman’s 197-page Protecting Cyberspace as a Naional Asset Act, the United States would formally mimic China’s “great firewall” of web censorship.
Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a bill on Thursday that would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the option for many Americans to shop over the Internet without paying state sales taxes.
At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors usually aren't required to pay sales taxes. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't be required to cough up the sales taxes that they would if shopping at a local mall.
Starting this month, colleges and universities that don't do enough to combat the illegal swapping of "Avatar" or Lady Gaga over their computer networks put themselves at risk of losing federal funding
A provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 is making schools a reluctant ally in the entertainment industry's campaign to stamp out unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music, movies and TV shows.
Colleges and universities must put in place plans "to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution's network" without hampering legitimate educational and research use, according to regulations that went into effect Thursday.
That means goodbye to peer-to-peer file-sharing on a few campuses — with exceptions for gamers or open-source software junkies — gentle warnings on others and extensive education programs everywhere else.
Source RT.com
The Fate of the Internet. Decided in a Back Room
The Wall Street Journal just reported that the Federal Communications Commission is holding "closed-door meetings" with industry to broker a deal on Net Neutrality – the rule that keeps control over the Internet with the people who use it.
Given that the corporations at the table all profit from gaining control over information, the outcome won't be pretty.
The meetings include a small group of industry lobbyists representing the likes of AT&T, Verizon, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and Google. They reportedly met for two-and-a-half hours on Monday morning and will convene another meeting today. The goal according to insiders is to "reach consensus" on rules of the road for the Internet.
This is what a failed democracy looks like: After years of avid public support for Net Neutrality – involving millionsof people from across the political spectrum – the federal regulator quietly huddles with industry lobbyists to eliminate basic protections and serve Wall Street’s bottom line.
We’ve seen government cater to big business in the same ways, prior to the BP oil disaster and the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. The Industry's regulatory capture of the Internet is now almost complete. The leadership of the one agency tasked with oversight of communications policy now thinks they can wriggle free of their obligation to protect the open Internet if only industry agrees on a solution.
Australian Government To Force Internet Users To Install State-Approved Software
 The Australian government is set to intensify its war against Internet freedom by forcing web users to install state-approved anti-virus software. If they fail to do so, they will be denied an Internet connection, or if their computer is later infected, the user’s connection will be terminated.
“AUSTRALIANS would be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a new plan to fight cyber crime. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers like Telstra and Optus could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved,” reports News.com.au.
A 260-page report released by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications outlines a plan to mandate Internet users to install government-approved software before their Internet connection can be activated.
Earlier this week during an interview at the D8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did the unthinkable: after finding the hotseat a little too toasty for his liking, he took off his hoodie. Interviewer Kara Swisher quickly discovered that the hoodie had a mysterious badge stitched on the inside and joked that Zuckerberg was in a cult. And then the Internet went sort of nuts.
Tweets abound about Facebook’s Illuminati-like status. The folks at SFWeekly managed to recreate the diagram and did a thorough analysis on what it might mean. The Next Web declared that it was creepy. And back at Facebook HQ, three goats were sacrificed in an attempt to ward off yet another wave of bad press.
WikiLeaks informant exposed by former hacker
The US government has arrested a US Army intelligence analyst for allegedly handing over classified US combat videos and State Department materials to WikiLeaks.
Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning is serving in Iraq and recently contacted a hacker online and told him that he leaked data to WikiLeaks.
Adrian Lamo is a journalist and former hacker who previously hacked into the New York Times website in 2004. Hackers and data leakers commonly reach out one another to discuss their exploits.
“We [Wired.com] recently published an interview with Adrian and I believe Bradley Manning, the army specialist, saw the interview and he sort of sensed a kindred spirit in Adrian for a number of reasons and contacted him. The conversation started out very personal and then it got into, very quickly, the discussion of leaks essentially identifying himself as having done this,” said Kim Zetter, a reporter with Wired.com. Source : ET.com
Obama to be given the right to shut down the internet with 'kill switch'
 President Obama will be given the power to shut down the Internet with a 'kill switch' in a new law being proposed in the US.
He would be able to order popular search engines such a Google and Yahoo to suspend access their websites in times of national emergency.
Other US based Internet service providers as well as broadband providers would also come under his control in times of a 'cybersecurity emergency.' Any company that failed to comply would be subject to huge fines.
Critics of the new law, which has been proposed by former presidential candidate Joe Liebermann, said it would be an abuse of power to let the White House control the internet.
Depending on which feature you use, Google Maps offers a satellite view or a street-level view of tons of locations around the world. You can look up landmarks like the Pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China, as well as more personal places, like your ex’s house. But for all of the places that Google Maps allows you to see, there are plenty of places that are off-limits. Whether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a "Prohibited" sign on the following 51 places.
Pentagon hacked 6 million times daily
Unauthorized users penetrate Pentagon networks over six million times a day, says the head of the US Cyber Command, urging US military to guard against cyber attacks.
General Keith Alexander cautioned that Pentagon systems are "probed by unauthorized users approximately 250,000 times an hour, over six million times a day." The remarks by Alexander, who is also at the helm of the main US spy organizations, the National Security Agency, was made in a Thursday address to a major Washington policy think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Online Newspaper Will Use CIA-type Practices
 The publisher/editor of online-only newspaper Pasadena Now says he’s “dabbling” in the use of some of the practices that spy agencies like the CIA use to gather data.
Macpherson gained national recognition and a bit of notoriety in some quarters of the media community when he started outsourcing news gathering to India in May 2007.
He uses local news gatherers in Pasadena, Calif., to write up the basic facts of a story. He sends that material to reporters in India who write it in newspaper story format and send it back. Macpherson does final editing before the stories go online.
“I’ve been using a reverse foreign desk,” Macpherson said. “People I’ve outsourced to overseas are covering Pasadena news.”
Macpherson says this saves money and that highly skilled Indian journalists are doing a good job of writing stories about doings in Pasadena.
Now he plans this year to start using data-mining software similar to what the CIA uses, as a new type of news-gathering tool.
“In the old days, it was newspapers as detectives. Today it has to be newspapers as intelligence agencies,” Macpherson told IBD. “I want to drill down into hot topics. I can do so and cover a lot of ground this way.
 Google Inc. said an internal investigation has discovered that the roving vans the company uses to create its online mapping services were mistakenly collecting data about websites people were visiting over wireless networks.The Internet giant said it would stop collecting Wi-Fi data from its StreetView vans, which workers drive to capture street images and to locate Wi-Fi networks. The company said it would dispose of the data it had accidentally collected.
Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research for Google, wrote in a blog post that the company uncovered the mistake while responding to a German data-protection agency's request for it to audit the Wi-Fi data, amid mounting concerns that Google's practices violated users' privacy
Another Notice: If you don’t want to live in a police state I suggest boycott Google after calling them and telling them that until they stop the SMS verification or make it optional that you won’t ever use a Google product or else one day Google may require a Social Security Number just to use an account.
Notice: I only changed IPs to test the theory of YouTube requiring all to submit SMS information. It is not for abuse and I do not condone people changing IPs for abuse. I only did this to verify YouTubes new policy. This was not to escape any bans but simply to verify that YouTube is requiring all to submit personal information that could also be tracked by the CIA and government sponsored disinfo trolls.
Police Recruit Internet Cafe Owners To Spy On Users
 As part of the lurching advance towards the kind of society that we thought had been consigned to the darkest days of the 20th century, the Nazi-fication of Britain continues with the news that the police are working with Internet cafe owners to spy on users who visit “extremist websites”.“The intitative is part of the Prevent strand of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy, which aims to stop radicalisation by winning the “battle of ideas”. Café owners are asked to use their own judgement as to what amounts to extremist material,” reports the Register.
Arun Kundnani of the Institute of Race Relations described the initiative as “dangerous”.
“It… potentially criminalises people for accessing material that is legal but which expresses religious and political opinions that police officers find unacceptable,” he said.
And that’s precisely the point. Creating a chilling atmosphere where people are afraid to express dissent, or merely read about other people expressing dissent, for fear of being labeled a terrorist and shopped to their local bobby by the dutiful thought police.
Using Internet cafe owners to spy on their users’ browsing habits is just one offshoot of the gigantic program undertaken by MI5 to train 60,000 UK citizens as a civilian network of terrorist spotters.
source: Prison Planet
Freedom is not found online
 There's something about the internet that can move even the most monosyllabic politician to flights of visionary rhetoric. "Imagine if the internet took hold in China," said George W Bush in 1999, sounding like a knock-off John Lennon. "Imagine how freedom would spread."It turns out he was wrong on that one, too. After four years of running a search engine in China, Google last week relocated it to Hong Kong. On the Chinese mainland, Google had been self-censoring search results to keep on the right side of the Communist party; now that it has moved offshore the entire service will face interruptions from the Great Firewall – a massive, sophisticated system that monitors Chinese surfing of any websites outside the domestic internet. What you're seeing here is not just the humbling of the Don't-Be-Evil brigade; it's yet another defeat of the idea that to bring democracy to foreign dictatorships, you simply add the internet.
Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously tossed out the FCC's August 2008 cease and desist order against Comcast, which had taken measures to slow BitTorrent transfers before voluntarily ending them earlier that year.
Because the FCC "has failed to tie its assertion" of regulatory authority to an actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the power to regulate an Internet provider's network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Tuesday's decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules--even though Congress has not given the agency permission to do so. That push is opposed by Verizon and other broadband providers
Why Google is the Nike of the internet
Google decided two weeks ago to shut down its hitherto self-censoring search service in China. This allegedly costly gesture, intended as a bold statement rather than a formal articulation of corporate "foreign policy", is congruous with the company's liberal philosophy and juxtaposed to the aged conformity of, say, Microsoft. But far from being seen merely as an act of adolescent bravado or tedious corporate management, it seems to have captured the imagination of intellectuals around the world
Read more >>
Comcast can now legally shut down downloads
Yesterday was a big day for independent media. We saw the release of gun camera footage, which showed how US troops killed an Iraqi journalist after mistaking a camera for an assault weapon.
Today was a big day for the mainstream media, as the US Court of appeals dissolved some FCC internet regulations protecting peer to peer networking.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1U2jZF/www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/04/fcc_net_neutrality_ruling.html?ft=1&f=103943429/r:t
and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/06/net-neutrality-us-court-r_n_526972.html
Is it just a coincidence that yesterday’s leak on P2P preceded today’s legal loss for P2P users? Of course not
Read more >>
 The Department of Defense already has omnipresent eyes in the sky, underwater and, of course, on the ground. It’s only when you start going underground that the surveillance powers of the Pentagon begin to wane — at least until now.
Just last month, the Pentagon’s risk-taking research arm, DARPA, announced plans for a program called ‘Transparent Earth’. They’re spending $4 million this year on preliminary plans for a digital, 3D map that would display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.”
But Geospatial Corporation is already doing it. The company, started in 2005 by longtime water-pipeline manufacturer Mark Smith, uses a proprietary gadget called ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. The company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas.
Newest computer touch screen may be your own body
In the future, you won't need to carry a computer. You'll only have to roll up your sleeve.
Researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University are developing a device that will project a touch screen onto the body – in most cases, your hand or forearm.
They call the technology "skinput."
School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home
 According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.
Spamming is big business
Spam is the annoying junk mail that floods your inbox. But no matter what discount drugs are offered or what body parts the messages promise to enlarge, make no mistake about it - spamming is big businessMy spam messages need to be effective. I need to write the message well to convince people to buy the product,” says said spammer Andy.
The reason Andy wants to be so convincing? He gets 50% of the cut, so not only is he clever in his wording, he also uses hacked material to carefully select his audience.
|
