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Submission + - Chaos Communication Congress : X11/X.Org Security In Bad Shape (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC), riled upon the X11 Server security with being "worse than it looks", "sheer terror", and the presenter having found more than 120 bugs in a few months of security research and not being close to being done in his work. Upstream X.Org developers have begun to call most of his claims valid. The presentation by Ilja van Sprunde is available for streaming.

Submission + - World's first Transparent Tablet .. (youtube.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A tablet that actually allows you to use all of your 10 fingers at a time, in a decent way.

Submission + - The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple's iPhone (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. National Security Agency has the ability to snoop on nearly every communication sent from an Apple iPhone, according to leaked documents shared by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and German news magazine Der Spiegel.

An NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera.

According to leaked documents, the NSA claims a 100 percent success rate when it comes to implanting iOS devices with spyware. The documents suggest that the NSA needs physical access to a device to install the spyware—something the agency has achieved by rerouting shipments of devices purchased online—but a remote version of the exploit is also in the works.

Submission + - New York Investigators Obtain Fraudulent Ballots 97 Percent of Time (nationalreview.com) 8

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: National Review reports, "New York City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) has just shown how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. Its undercover agents were able to obtain ballots for city elections a total of 61 times — 39 times using the names of dead people, 14 times using the names of incarcerated felons, and eight times using the names of non-residents. On only two occasions, or about 3 percent of the time, were the agents stopped by polling-place officials. In one of the two cases, an investigator was stopped only because the felon he was trying to vote in the name of was the son of the election official he was dealing with. Ballot security in checking birth dates or signatures was so sloppy that young undercover agents were able to vote using the name of someone three times their age who had died. As the New York Post reports: “A 24-year female was able to access the ballot at a Manhattan poll site in November under the name of a deceased female who was born in 1923 and died in April 25, 2012 — and would have been 89 on Election Day.” All of the agents who got ballots wrote in the names of fictitious candidates so as not to actually influence election outcomes."

Submission + - The Visual Studio 2013 Experience

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: Breaking down the new features and major changes http://sdt.bz/67474 differentiating 2013 from 2012, delving into feature breakdowns of cloud-based options, TypeScript, the CodeLens editor, Peek Definition, .NET and ASP.NET 4.5.1, C++. To install or not install, ultimately that depends on what you need to get out of Visual Studio.

Submission + - Unhappy with your government? Start a new one. 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stories like the NSA revelations (among many others) suggest that modern governments may be getting the sense that they exist of their own right and independent of the people who allegedly democratically control them. When faced with trying to "fix" this situation, individuals are daunted by the scope of the task. The institutions of government are huge and difficult to imagine changing. However, apart from changing from the inside or revolting against the system, there is a very different alternative: just set up a new government. Of course current governments frown on that, but there are ways around it. Seasteading advocates creating new nations in newly-created lands (i.e., on the seas). Open source governance advocates setting up new, internet-based communities with their own governance system and allowing those communities to gradually push out the antiquated systems. What's your plan for living in democracy in the coming year?

Submission + - Britain's Costliest Mistake? (theregister.co.uk) 2

Submitted by RoccamOccam
RoccamOccam writes: Five years after UK passage of the 2008 Climate Change Act, the chief proponent of the act, Nick Stern, has responded to "A Review of the Stern Review". The "Stern Review" was a massive economic assessment that helped convince Parliament that climate mitigation measures would be worth the cost.

The result was quite possibly the most expensive legislation ever passed by Parliament. However, it appears that Stern’s analysis may have been deeply flawed.

Submission + - Windows Crash Reports Unecrypted and Unencumbered (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The NSA uses its XKeyscore spying tool to find Windows Error Reporting crash reports, which are sent in the clear to Microsoft. The information is used to fingerprint machines for compromise, and is a treasure trove of system and application data for not only the spy agency, but for hackers as well who may have compromised an upstream proxy or ISP.
The best countermeasure, since the feature is on by default post-Windows XP, is a change to a Group Policy setting that forces that initial transmission to be encrypted. However, 80 percent of the billion-plus Windows machines on the plant, participate in the program and send this sensitive data in the clear.

Submission + - Public Domain Day 2014 (duke.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What could have been entering the public domain in the US on January 1, 2014? Under the law that existed until 1978.... Works from 1957. The books “On The Road,” “Atlas Shrugged,” "Empire of the Atom," and “The Cat in the Hat,” the films "The Incredible Shrinking Man," “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and “12 Angry Men,” the article "Theory of Superconductivity," the songs “All Shook Up” and “Great Balls of Fire,” and more.... What is entering the public domain this January 1? Not a single published work. http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2014/pre-1976

Submission + - The Shadowy Darknet will be the Only Truly World-wide Web (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: “The shadowy Darknet then will be the only truly world-wide web” — this is the view of Alexander Gostev, chief security expert at Kaspersky Lab who believes the fallout from Edward Snowden's leaks may lead at some point to the "collapse of the current Internet, which will break into dozens of national networks."

Submission + - Increasing Number of Books Banned in the USA (npr.org)

Submitted by vikingpower
vikingpower writes: Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man.

What do all these titles have in common with each other ? Exactly, they are banned somewhere, on some school, in the USA. . Yes, in 2013. A project named The Kids' Right to Read ( by the National Coalition Against Censorship ) investigated three times the average number of incidents, adding to an overall rise in cases for the entire year, according to KRRP coordinator Acacia O'Connor. To date, KRRP has confronted 49 incidents in 29 states this year, a 53% increase in activity from 2012. During the second half of 2013, the project battled 31 new incidents, compared to only 14 in the same period last year.

"It has been a sprint since the beginning of the school year," O'Connor said. "We would settle one issue and wake up the next morning to find out another book was on the chopping block."

The NCAC also offers a Book Censorship Toolkit on its website. If such a toolkit is needed at all, does this indicate that intellectual freedom and free speech are ( slowly ) eroding in the USA ?

Submission + - The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple's iPhone (dailydot.com) 3

Submitted by Frankie70
Frankie70 writes: The U.S. National Security Agency has the ability to snoop on nearly every communication sent from an Apple iPhone, according to leaked documents shared by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and German news magazine Der Spiegel.

An NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera.

Submission + - U.S. home electricity use declines for 3rd straight year (www.cbc.ca) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For a third year in a row the U.S. home has used less electricity. The continuing focus on energy conservation combined with new technology has and probably will continue to show promise.

Submission + - NSA Can Hack wifi 8 Miles Out - Implications For Commercial Use (ubergizmo.com) 2

Submitted by littlewink
littlewink writes: Assume that the NSA, as they claim, can hack wifi 8 mile out. Then it must be possible for a network of enhanced wifi routers (not controlled by the NSA) to act as a wide-area network similar to now-defunct Metricom's Ricochet system except far more robust, distributed and less costly. Such a network, by reducing the role of local ISPs, could reduce unwanted monitoring (by NSA and others).

I am asking for suggestions about software/hardware enhanced stacks for such a "New and Freer Internet"?

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