British PM Considers Social Network Censorship In The Wake Of London Riots

When tyrants in Middle Eastern countries cut Internet access in the midst of political upheaval, it's pointed to as yet another symptom of a sad and brutal dictatorship. Does that thinking hold true when a Western country censors its citizen's ability to speak online? We may soon find out. In the wake of the devastating riots in the heart of London, Prime Minister David Cameron alluded to the House of Commons that the British government may consider pulling the plug on social networks when the goings get rough in the UK.

'Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media,' Cameron said. 'Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.'

'So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.'

This isn't the first technological-themed response to the riots; as we told you the other day, a group of Google users is trying to ID rioters captured in photographs using facial recognition technology. But if the British government indeed decides that it's acceptable to disconnect social networking services during times of duress, it seems like it would be acting contrary to the recommendations of a recent UN Human Rights Council report.

Paragraph 79 of "The Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression,' (PDF) which was officially recognized by the UN Human Rights Council on June 3rd, states: 'The Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to ensure that Internet access is maintained at all times, including during times of political unrest.' Sure, denying access to social networks isn't quite the same thing as cutting Internet access entirely, but we're 'Spirit of the Law' types of people (and yeah, we know we originally covered the UN report from the file sharing slant, but it works here, too).

Image credit: AP/huffingtonpost.com

Source: British PM Considers Social Network Censorship In The Wake Of London Riots

Download the Latest Security Tools to Your Flash Drive with SSDownload

Talk about convenient! With this open-source gem on your flash drive, you can quickly and easily download all the latest versions of your favorite rescue utilities.

Source: Download the Latest Security Tools to Your Flash Drive with SSDownload

Need biofuel from bacteria? Run their fat-burning cycle in reverse

The majority of plant matter we have available to produce biofuels comes in the form of cellulose, a long polymer of sugars. It's easiest to convert this material to ethanol, but that creates its own problems: ethanol is less energy dense than petroleum-based fuels, and most vehicles on the road can't burn more than a 15 percent mix of ethanol and standard gasoline.

These disadvantages have led a number of labs to look into ways of using a cellulose feedstock to produce something more like standard fuels. In yesterday's Nature, researchers proposed a clever way of doing this: take the biochemical pathway that normally burns fat and run it in reverse.

Source: Need biofuel from bacteria? Run their fat-burning cycle in reverse

New LCD Tech Could Make Self Charging Android Handsets a Reality

Some mad scientists over on UCLA’s engineering team have effectively developed a new type of LCD using photovaltaic polarizers that recycle energy from sunlight or a device’s own backlight to charge itself. Pretty epic, right? If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, this could be exactly what Android ordered.

Youssry Boutros, program director for the Intel Labs Academic Research Office, which supported the research explains:

“The polarizing organic photovoltaic cell demonstrated by Professor Yang’s research group can potentially harvest 75 percent of the wasted photons from LCD backlight and turn them back into electricity. The strong collaboration between this group at UCLA Engineering and other top groups has led to higher cell efficiencies, increasing the potential for harvesting energy. This approach is interesting in its own right and at the same time synergetic with several other projects we are funding through the Intel Labs Academic Research Office.”

Before you get your hopes up, it could be quite sometime before we could see this technology (or something just like it) adopted by handset manufacturers. Still, Professor Yang remains hopeful:

“In the near future, we would like to increase the efficiency of the polarizing organic photovoltaics, and eventually we hope to work with electronic manufacturers to integrate our technology into real products. We hope this energy-saving LCD will become a mainstream technology in displays.”

Me too, Mr. Yang. Me too…

[Via Engadget]

Judge Actually Recognizes The 4th Amendment: Says Police Can't Get Location Info From Telcos To Arrest You

With all the reports of law enforcement collecting tons of location info from telcos without a warrant, as well as a bunch of court rulings that seem to chip away at what's left of the 4th Amendment, it's somewhat surprising to see a magistrate judge say that police cannot use a warrant to find out your location from a mobile operator, for the purpose of arresting you. From Orin Kerr's summary of the ruling:

Here’s the basic reasoning of the opinion. First Judge Gauvey creates what a appears to be a new distinction in Fourth Amendment law: a distinction between (a) Fourth Amendment rights in location at a given time, and (b) Fourth Amendment rights in movement over time. According to Judge Gauvey, individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in both. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy as to a person’s location if a person cannot be visually observed in that same way. And there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in movements, which Judge Gauvey seems to be taking from the DC Circuit’s Maynard/Jones “mosaic theory” case (which the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear). Judge Gauvey then reasons that if everyone has this Fourth Amendment right, people who have warrants out for their arrest have this right to privacy, too. For that reason, the information held by the phone company as to the location of the phone user is protected by the Fourth Amendment.



Judge Gauvey then considers whether the Fourth Amendment allows a warrant to be issued based on probable cause that the information will help execute an arrest warrant. She concludes the answer is no: A Fourth Amendment warrant requires probable cause that evidence or contraband is located in the place to be searched or that a person who committed a crime is in the place to be searched. Mere probable cause to believe that location information would help the police execute a warrant is not enough under the Fourth Amendment.

Kerr suggests that the case law actually disagrees with the judge in this case, and even the judge appears to admit that she thinks the Supreme Court might disagree, but she said without specific guidance from the Supreme Court, she believes her ruling is correct.

Source: Judge Actually Recognizes The 4th Amendment: Says Police Can't Get Location Info From Telcos To Arrest You:

The NYPD Has Hacked Together a Social Media Taskforce [Police]

In the midst of the ongoing violence in London and after what must be boatloads of crimes stemming from online activity, the NYPD has formed a unit dedicated to sifting through Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace for information on dangerous activity. More »


Source: The NYPD Has Hacked Together a Social Media Taskforce [Police]: "

Hacker Group Anonymous Aims To Destroy Facebook on Nov. 5

Hackivist group Anonymous vows to “kill Facebook” on November 5, citing users’ lack of choice in privacy as its reason for attack.

Update: Anonymous confirmed via a tweet that while some of its members are organizing the upcoming attack against Facebook, the hacker organization as a whole does not necessarily agree with the attack.

The group of hackers has claimed participation in just about every recent notable hacking attack of this year and successfully broke into 70 law enforcement websites and took down the Syrian Ministry of Defense website this week alone.

This recent interest in Facebook, despite a slew of privacy concerns raised against the social network since its founding, may be a result of Anonymous’s recent announcement that it plans to create its own social network, called AnonPlus. After the group’s Google+ account, called “Your Anon News,” was banned, it began fleshing out AnonPlus.com, “a new social network where there is no fear … of censorship … of blackout … nor of holding back.”

Below is a video and statement released by Anonymous explaining the reason for its upcoming battle with the world’s largest social network. Let us know your thoughts on the group’s statement in the comments below.

---

Anonymous Statement

---

Attention citizens of the world,

We wish to get your attention, hoping you heed the warnings as follows:

Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy.

Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria.

Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your 'privacy' settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you 'delete' your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more 'private' is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family.

http://www.physorg.com/news170614271.html

http://itgrunts.com/2010/10/07/facebook-steals-numbers-and-data-from-your-iphone/

You cannot hide from the reality in which you, the people of the internet, live in. Facebook is the opposite of the Antisec cause. You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you.

The riots are underway. It is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It is a battle for choice and informed consent. It's unfolding because people are being raped, tickled, molested, and confused into doing things where they don't understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely false. It gives users the illusion of and hides the details away from them 'for their own good' while they then make millions off of you. When a service is 'free,' it really means they're making money off of you and your information.

Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5 2011, #opfacebook . Engaged.

This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled, not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.

We are anonymous

We are legion

We do not forgive

We do not forget

Expect us

Source: Hacker Group Anonymous Aims To Destroy Facebook on Nov. 5:

Wil Wheaton Explains Why Hollywood Needs To Compete With 'Piracy'

An anonymous user pointed us to this nice quick video of actor/geek Wil Wheaton discussing how the entertainment industry needs to catch up with the 21st century when it comes to dealing with 'piracy.'



It starts out with Wil saying: 'As soon as the entertainment industry provides an alternative to Bittorrent or an alternative to piracy, that makes it just as easy for honest people to get access to the programming, then the piracy dries up.' Of course, plenty of us have said this for years, but it's nice to see another actor speaking up about this, even if it's one as 'in touch' with the tech world as Wheaton. Wheaton goes on to quote Gabe Newell, to explain how the industry is too often focused on pirates who will never pay, and to talk about the ridiculousness of him not being able to watch videos he had legally purchased while travelling in Canada because he was outside the proper territory. The whole (short) video is completely worth watching. He notes that it's difficult to pull the entertainment industry into the modern era and suggests that they're just about reaching 1997 right now.

Source: Wil Wheaton Explains Why Hollywood Needs To Compete With 'Piracy':

As the rate of cancer spikes among Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officers who work near the full-body scanners at the Boston Logan Airport, union reps are alarmed at having been misinformed by the Department of Homeland Security

Abode of Chaos image
Flickr Creative Commons

As the rate of cancer spikes among Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officers who work near the full-body scanners at the Boston Logan Airport, union reps are alarmed at having been misinformed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and TSA regarding the safety of these machines. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, has acquired radiation studies, and radiation test results from DHS which the center says gives evidence that the government failed to appropriately test the safety of these devices at airports and disregarded concerns from airport. According to the documents, “A large number of workers have been falling victim to cancer, strokes and heart disease.”

EPIC says the relinquished documents indicate that DHS “publicly mischaracterized” safety findings by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) by intimating that the organization had “affirmed the safety” of the ominous scanners. In fact, antipodal to confirming their safety, the documents obtained by EPIC show that NIST cautioned that TSA officers should avoid standing next to the machines, as to keep exposure to caustic radiation “as low as reasonably achievable.” In contradistinction to repetitive TSA claims that Johns Hopkins had authenticated the benign nature of the scanners, the FOIA docs illustrate how the university's study actually unveiled that radiation zones around the machines could exceed the “General Public Dose Limit”. In fact, Dr. Michael Love, head of the X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins, publicly stated that “statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays”.

Dr. David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s center for radiological research, discovered in a study conducted last year that the machines are likely to lead to an increase in basal cell carcinoma, a common type of skin cancer affecting the head and neck. Post-study, Brenner urged medical authorities to overview his work, indicating the critical notion of mass scanning millions of people without proper oversight. February 2010 saw like concerns voiced by the prominent Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, who warned in a report that the scanners increase the risk of cancer and birth defects and should not be used on pregnant women or children. And Bloomberg reported, “Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency”.

A dark pall has hung over these devices since their inception. If they are really as benign as they are claimed to be, then why did EPIC have to sue for the culpable information? This past December, TSA workers complained about the radiation peril of the scanners, declaring they were being kept in the dark by their employers, in spite of ongoing requests for information. TSA union reps at the Boston airport requested dosimeters (radiation-monitoring devices) to monitor the safety of their officers but have yet to receive them.


Source: As the rate of cancer spikes among Transportation Security Agency (TSA) officers who work near the full-body scanners at the Boston Logan Airport, union reps are alarmed at having been misinformed by the Department of Homeland Security

Fourth Day of Riots in London

Riots have engulfed London and other cities in England over the past four days, sparked by a police shooting in Tottenham and exploited by criminals. More than 16,000 police are deployed across the capital in an attempt to prevent a fourth night of violence.

Source: Fourth Day of Riots in London

Hacker group Anonymous takes over Syrian Ministry of Defense website

Hacker group Anonymous takes over Syrian Ministry of Defense website