cold fjord writes: General Michael Hayden (Retired), who served as head of both the NSA and CIA, has taken a position supporting Apple in its conflict with the FBI. Apple is fighting a court order to assist the FBI in breaking into the government owned phone used by one of the two dead terrorists responsible for the recent San Bernardino massacre. General Hayden stated, "You can argue this on constitutional grounds. Does the government have the right to do this? Frankly, I think the government does have a right to do it. You can do balancing privacy and security dead men don't have a right to privacy. I don't use those lenses. My lens is the security lens, and frankly, it's a close but clear call that Apple's right on just raw security grounds. ... I get why the FBI wants to get into the phones but this may be a case where we've got to give up some things in law enforcement and even counter terrorism in order to preserve this aspect, our cybersecurity."

An anonymous reader writes: China's growing nation status has Japan reconsidering its 70-year old ban on military research projects, as Japanese defense circles actively seek to take advantage of the country's vanguard position in robotic technology. Pressure from the government is also mounting, as authorities try to find means to bring university researchers into the defense fold — particularly to meet the challenge of a more aggressive Chinese military. Funding cuts in Japanese higher education, combined with a weakened economy and governmental austerity measures, may make the allure of military funding irresistible to researchers and academic institutions.

An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has quietly revised its privacy rules for searching data involving Americans' international communications that was collected by the NSA, US officials have confirmed to the Guardian. The classified revisions were accepted by the secret US court that governs surveillance, during its annual recertification of the agencies' broad surveillance powers. The new rules affect a set of powers colloquially known as Section 702, the portion of the law that authorizes the NSA's sweeping "Prism" program to collect internet data. Section 702 falls under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and is a provision set to expire later this year. A government civil liberties watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, alluded to the change in its recent overview of ongoing surveillance practices. The PCLOB's new compliance report, released last month, found that the administration has submitted "revised FBI minimization procedures" that address at least some of the group's concerns about "many" FBI agents who use NSA-gathered data. Sharon Bradford Franklin, a spokesperson for the PCLOB, said the rule changes move to enhance privacy. She could not say when the rules actually changed -- that, too, is classified. Last February, a compliance audit alluded to imminent changes to the FBI's freedom to search the data for Americans' identifying information. "FBI's minimization procedures will be updated to more clearly reflect the FBI's standard for conducting US person queries and to require additional supervisory approval to access query results in certain circumstances," the review stated. The reference to "supervisory approval" suggests the FBI may not require court approval for their searches -- unlike the new system Congress enacted last year for NSA or FBI acquisition of US phone metadata in terrorism or espionage cases.

hondo77 writes: On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its official assessment of December, January, and February's temperatures across the United States, and the results are striking: Not a single state in the U.S. had a cooler than average winter. (NOAA treats Alaska and Hawaii separately, due to shorter weather data records there -- though both states were significantly warmer than normal this winter. Weather records for the contiguous United States go back to 1895.) NOAA blames the recent warm weather on a record-strength El Nino "and other climate patterns," most notably, global warming. As a whole, this winter in the lower 48 was about 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average: a sharp contrast to the previous back-to-back frigid polar vortex winters, especially in the Northeast.

schwit1 writes: Guccifer, the infamous Romanian hacker who accessed emails of celebrities and top US officials, will be extradited to the United States after losing a case in his home country's top court. Reuters reports that Lehel will come to the US under an 18-month extradition order, following a request made by the US authorities. Details of the extradition have not been made public, however. Marcel Lehel, a 42-year-old hacker better known by his pseudonym "Guccifer," achieved notoriety when he released an email with images of paintings by former President George W. Bush, including a self-portrait in a bathtub. He also hacked and published emails from celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Steve Martin and Mariel Hemingway. Perhaps most notably, Lehel was also the first source to uncover Hillary Clinton's improper use of a private email account while she was Secretary of State, which the FBI is investigating as a potential danger to national security.

An anonymous reader writes: MIT has launched a new scheme whereby participating users can voluntarily share data on their website viewing habits, via the use of a Google Chrome extension and by signing up to an MIT website. The scheme, called Eyebrowse, began development in 2010 and has been in closed beta for the last 18 months. Cornell information science professor Mor Naaman says of the project: "Data has traditionally been used by anyone from corporations to the government...but the goal of this system is to make the data more useful for the individuals themselves, to give them more control, and to make it more useful to communities."

mdsolar writes: France is to close down its oldest nuclear power plant, at the center of a row with neighboring Germany and Switzerland, by the end of this year, a green minister said Sunday. "The timeline is one the president has repeated to me several times, it's 2016," said Emmanuelle Cosse, who was named to President Francois Hollande's cabinet last month, referring to the Fessenheim plant. Cosse was speaking to French media after a row sparked Friday when Germany demanded that France close down Fessenheim following reports that a 2014 incident there was worse than earlier portrayed. France's Nuclear Safety Agency said that safety at the plant was "overall satisfactory" but that the government's energy policy "could lead to different choices" regarding the facility, which is near the German and Swiss borders. It said there was "no need" to shut the plant from a nuclear safety point of view. France has promised to cut reliance on nuclear energy from more than 75 percent to 50 percent by shutting 24 reactors by 2025, while stepping up reliance on renewable energy.

An anonymous reader writes: The Turkish downing of the Russian SU-24 jet last November saw a predictable series of statements from each side claiming complete innocence and blaming the other entirely. Social media was a key battleground for both sides — the Turkish and Russian governments, along with their supporters — as each tried to establish a dominant narrative explanation for what had just happened. In the midst of the online competition, a little-observed, funhouse mirror of an online hoax was brilliantly perpetrated, one with consequences likely exceeding the expectation of the hoaxster. The Russian Ministry of Defense was duped by a fake image that Russian state media itself had circulated more than a year earlier, as a way to deny Moscow's involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Mr.Intel writes with the Guardian's report that : San Bernadino D.A. has a novel argument for why Apple should be forced to provide the FBI with tools to decrypt the iPhone once used by mass-shooter Syed Rizwan Farook: a "dormant cyber pathogen," he says, could have been unleashed by the county's electronic infrastructure, and only by examining the phone's content can any really be sure. From the article: The questionable claim comes from Ramos's amicus brief in the case, filed with the US District Court on Thursday afternoon. In it, Ramos supports the FBI's argument that Apple should be compelled to build a one-use version of its operating system to load on to the seized phone – used by the mass-murderer, but still technically property of his employer, San Bernardino county – in order to weaken the security and allow the Government to brute-force the shooter's passcode. ... Ramos said: 'The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County'.

An anonymous reader writes: Hundreds of different data-hacking events are being held around the globe this weekend to celebrate International Open Data Day. It's the fifth installment of an annual event promoting government data-sharing with a series of loosely joined hackathons, "to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world's local, regional and national governments," according to the event's web site. "Data science is a team sport," says Megan Smith, the former Google executive turned U.S. CTO, who points out over 200,000 new federal data sets have been opened to the public since 2009 on Data.gov. Each hackathon will culminate with a demo or brainstorm proposal that can be shared with the other participating groups around the world.

v3rgEz writes: As the saying goes, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' If a machine is doing its job, reliably and without error, then common sense dictates that you just shouldn't mess with it. This is doubly true for computers and quadruply true for government computers. This lends itself to an obvious question: what's the government computer most in need of an upgrade? MuckRock has launched a new FOIA project to find out, and has already started receiving some interesting results.

HughPickens.com writes: Cyrus Farivar reports at ArsTechnica that Congressman David Jolly has introduced the "No Taxpayer Support for Apple Act," a bill that would forbid federal agencies from purchasing Apple products until the company cooperates with the federal court order to assist the unlocking of a seized iPhone 5C associated with the San Bernardino terrorist attack. "Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil," said Jolly, who announced in 2015 that he's running for Senate, joining the crowded GOP primary field to replace Sen. Marco Rubio. "Following the horrific events of September 11, 2001, every citizen and every company was willing to do whatever it took to side with law enforcement and defeat terror. It's time Apple shows that same conviction to further protect our nation today." Jolly's bill echoes a call from Donald Trump last month to boycott Apple until it agrees to assist the FBI. Not to fear, GovTrack gives Jolly's bill a 1% chance of being enacted.

New submitter Kurast writes with this article at Boing Boing: Code is speech: critical court rulings from the early history of the Electronic Frontier Foundation held that code was a form of expressive speech, protected by the First Amendment. The EFF has just submitted an amicus brief in support of Apple in its fight against the FBI, representing 46 "technologists, researchers and cryptographers," laying out the case that the First Amendment means that Apple can't be forced to utter speech to the government's command, and they especially can't be forced to sign and endorse that speech. In a "deep dive" post, EFF's Andrew Crocker and Jamie Williams take you through the argument, step by step. (You can follow along by reading the brief itself (PDF), too.)

jeffengel writes: When Facebook's news feed and Google's search bar have the power to influence voter decisions, is it time for government oversight? That's what Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal and co-founder of Acquia, is proposing: an "FDA for data and algorithms." The move would aim to boost transparency, but it also raises tough questions. What exactly would such an agency be tasked with monitoring, and what would its penalties look like? Would it wield too much power, pushing the U.S. closer to China levels of information control? Buytaert is pitching the idea as part of a broader push for a more open Web that reduces the dominance of a handful of platforms.

An anonymous reader notes an effort in the UK, as reported by the Guardian, to clamp down on the so-called "iPlayer loophole" which allows BBC programs to be time shifted in a way that avoids paying the television tax. From the article: In a speech on Wednesday, culture secretary John Whittingdale also asked whether popular BBC1 programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing were "distinctive" enough and launched a new initiative on the devastating impact of adblockers on the newspaper industry. After the speech at the Oxford Media Convention, Whittingdale said closing the loophole could not wait for legislation was passed to renew the BBC's royal charter by the end of the year. Instead, it would be done "as soon as practicable" through secondary legislation that could be put before parliament as early as this summer.

Deathspawner writes: Last March, Canada's regulatory agency for all things broadcasting, CRTC, ruled that cable TV providers would soon be forced to offer $25/mo packages. With enforcement having kicked-off on March 1, these inexpensive packages have now been made available. As Techgage has discovered, though, the first packages out-of-the-gate pack a number of caveats, and in some cases, are outright misleading. And, despite a simple framework to worth with, the two largest providers in the country, Rogers and Bell, offer vastly different packages, and ultimately vastly different values to the consumer.

itwbennett writes: You need look no further than the FREAK and Logjam attacks in 2015 and the DROWN attack announced just this week to get a sense of 'the dangers of deliberately weakening security protocols by introducing backdoors or other access mechanisms like those that law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community are calling for today,' writes Lucian Constantin. But this isn't a new problem. 'One approach [the government] used throughout the 1990s [to keep encryption under its control] was to enforce export controls on products that used encryption by limiting the key lengths, allowing the National Security Agency to easily decrypt foreign communications,' says Constantin. 'This gave birth to so-called 'export-grade' encryption algorithms that have been integrated into cryptographic libraries and have survived to this day.'

mi writes: You may not have heard of it yet, but Maryland Transit Administration began recording passengers' conversations in 2012 — on its own initiative. Legislative efforts to put an end to the practice failed four times since then — but some State Senators keep trying "What [the MTA] is doing is a mass surveillance [...] I can make an argument to tape everybody, everywhere, everywhere they walk, everywhere they talk, and you can make the excuse for homeland security." If we had competing public transport companies, one could've switched to a privacy-respecting competitor. Alas, MTA holds a monopoly and legislation is the only recourse.

HughPickens.com writes: Dana Goldstein writes at Slate that political scientist Andrew Hacker proposes replacing algebra II and calculus in the high school and college with a practical course in statistics for citizenship. According to Hacker, only mathematicians and some engineers actually use advanced math in their day-to-day work and even the doctors, accountants, and coders of the future shouldn't have to master abstract math that they'll never need. For many math is often an impenetrable barrier to academic success. Algebra II, which includes polynomials and logarithms, and is required by the new Common Core curriculum standards used by 47 states and territories, drives dropouts at both the high school and college levels. Hacker's central argument is that advanced mathematics requirements, like algebra, trigonometry and calculus, are "a harsh and senseless hurdle" keeping far too many Americans from completing their educations and leading productive lives. "We are really destroying a tremendous amount of talent—people who could be talented in sports writing or being an emergency medical technician, but can't even get a community college degree," says Hacker. "I regard this math requirement as highly irrational." According to Hacker many of those who struggled through a traditional math regimen feel that doing so annealed their character while critics says that mathematics is used as a hoop, a badge, a totem to impress outsiders and elevate a profession's status. "It's not hard to understand why Caltech and M.I.T. want everyone to be proficient in mathematics. But it's not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar. Demanding algebra across the board actually skews a student body, not necessarily for the better."

MarkWhittington writes: The Mosul Dam, located near the city of Mosul in Northern Iraq, was started by Saddam Hussein in 1981 as a way to bolster his regime and provide power to the surrounding area. It was completed in 1986 and has since generated 3,420 gigawatt/hours per year. Unfortunately, the dam was built on an unstable foundation of gypsum and thus needs constant repairs to plug leaks and maintain its structural integrity. Even more unfortunately, such repair efforts have stopped since the Islamic State seized control of Mosul. The dam could burst at any time, as a consequence. The flood could kill a million people and render a million more homeless. Radio Free Europe reports that Italy's Trevi Group has been contracted to repair and maintain the dam, but it seems like there's a lot to catch up with. (Also at The Guardian and Mother Jones.)