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Submission + - Salt Water Powered Car Gets European Approval (subfeed.net) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In a breakthrough that is bound to catch the attention of the oil industry and even electric car makers, a company has just gained approval for its ‘salt water’ powered car in Europe.

A car called the Quant e-Sportlimousine that was presented at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show is the first electric car powered by salt water and is now certified for use on European public roads.

The e-Sportlimousine, built by the German company Quant, runs on an electrolyte flow cell power system made by NanoFlowcell that generates a staggering 920 horsepower, goes 0-62 mph in 2.8 seconds, and propels the car to a top speed of 217.5 mph.

Submission + - Homeland Security settles lawsuit of reporter whose home they illegally searched 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In a lawsuit settlement Homeland Security has agreed to pay $50,000 and promise to return everything they seized — including confidential files and paperwork that identified Homeland Security whistleblowers –during an illegal raid of a reporter’s home.

Audrey Hudson, an award-winning journalist most recently at the Washington Times, told The Daily Signal she was awoken by her barking dog around 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2013, to discover armed government agents had descended on her property under the cover of darkness. The agents had a search warrant for her husband’s firearms. As they scoured the home, Hudson was read her Miranda rights.

While inside Hudson’s house, a U.S. Coast Guard agent confiscated documents that contained “confidential notes, draft articles, and other newsgathering materials” that Hudson never intended for anyone else to see. The documents included the identities of whistleblowers at the Department of Homeland Security. The Coast Guard is part of Homeland Security.

The settlement requires the government to return all documents, destroy all notes made from these papers, and promise it did not copy anything. Does anyone believe this?

Submission + - Doctor Boards Atlanta Flight In HazMat Suit To Protest "Lying CDC" (ajc.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: "If they're not lying, they are grossly incompetent," said Dr. Gil Mobley, a microbiologist and emergency trauma physician from Springfield, Mo. as he checked in and cleared Atlanta airport security wearing a mask, goggles, gloves, boots and a hooded white jumpsuit emblazoned on the back with the words, "CDC is lying!" As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Mobley says the CDC is "sugar-coating" the risk of the virus spreading in the United States.

Submission + - Drone shootdown over New Jersey (nbcphiladelphia.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: New Jersey police arrested Russell J. Percenti last weekfor allegedly firing a shotgun at a helicopter drone flying in the vicinity of his home. According to the owner of the drone, it was being used to capture photographs of a nearby home that was currently under construction. While he was flying the drone over the unfinished home to take the photos, he heard several gunshots in the vicinity and immediately lost control of the drone.

When the owner recovered the broken drone, he discovered multiple holes that were likely the result of at least one shotgun blast.

Submission + - Something keeps coming and going in a sea on Titan

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Cassini images taken in 2007, 2013, and 2014 of one of Titan’s largest hydrocarbon seas find that a mysterious feature there keeps appearing and disappearing.

The mysterious feature, which appears bright in radar images against the dark background of the liquid sea, was first spotted during Cassini’s July 2013 Titan flyby. Previous observations showed no sign of bright features in that part of Ligeia Mare. Scientists were perplexed to find the feature had vanished when they looked again, over several months, with low-resolution radar and Cassini’s infrared imager. This led some team members to suggest it might have been a transient feature. But during Cassini’s flyby on August 21, 2014, the feature was again visible, and its appearance had changed during the 11 months since it was last seen.

Scientists on the radar team are confident that the feature is not an artifact, or flaw, in their data, which would have been one of the simplest explanations. They also do not see evidence that its appearance results from evaporation in the sea, as the overall shoreline of Ligeia Mare has not changed noticeably. The team has suggested the feature could be surface waves, rising bubbles, floating solids, solids suspended just below the surface, or perhaps something more exotic.

That the seasons are slowly changing on Titan is probably contributing to the transient nature of this feature.

Submission + - Debate Simmers Over Disclosing Warrantless Spying (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Obama administration lawyers have been debating whether the Treasury Department must inform the people or groups it lists as foreign terrorists when it relies on warrantless surveillance as the basis for the designation, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

Intelligence officials are said to oppose being more forthcoming about who has been subjected to surveillance, especially in cases involving noncitizens abroad — who do not have Fourth Amendment privacy rights — because such information would tip them off that the National Security Agency had intercepted their communications.

But a provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, requires the government to disclose when it uses information from eavesdropping in any “proceeding” against people. In 2008, Congress made the N.S.A.’s warrantless surveillance program a part of FISA, but the full implications of applying its disclosure provision to that program were initially overlooked.

Outside specialists said the same part of the law may apply to other government decisions that rely on such intelligence, including adding names to the “no fly” list and deciding whether to approve visas and licenses that require a security screening.

Submission + - U.S. Law Enforcement Seeks to Halt Apple-Google Encryption of Mobile Data (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: U.S. law enforcement officials are urging Apple and Google to give authorities access to smartphone data that the companies have decided to block, and are weighing whether to appeal to executives or seek congressional legislation.

The new privacy features, announced two weeks ago by the California-based companies, will stymie investigations into crimes ranging from drug dealing to terrorism, law enforcement officials said.

“This is a very bad idea,” said, chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, in an interview. Smartphone communication is “going to be the preferred method of the pedophile and the criminal. We are going to lose a lot of investigative opportunities.”

Submission + - Australia's climate agency admits to fudging climate data

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) has finally admitted that it alters the temperatures recorded at almost all the official weather stations in Australia.

They claim that these adjustments are necessary to make the readings more accurate.

Using a process it calls homogenization, ABM has replaced actual temperature measurements with massaged numbers. ABM claims anomalies have arisen in both the historical data and current measurements due to a wide variety of factors unrelated to climate, such as differing types of instruments used, choices of calibration or enclosure and where it was located, and the closure of some stations and opening of others. The ABM argues such factors justify homogenization of the numbers.

Yet somehow, all the adjustments make the present readings hotter and the past readings colder, thus accentuating the illusion of global warming. Nor is this surprising, as the head of ABM has publicly stated his firm belief in global warming, as noted in the article above.

So, shut up and trust their judgment!

Submission + - Huntsville schools say call from NSA led to monitoring students online

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An alleged phone call from the NSA prompted public school officials in an Alabama school district to launch a surveillance program to monitor students’ online activities, administrators of the Huntsville City School District now admit.

The NSA allegedly took an interest in the Lee High School student body after Auseel Yousefi, a straight-A student, posted a series of questionable tweets about getting into fights and hitting a teacher. Yousefi claims the tweets were intended in jest, but school security officials searched the student’s car and found a weapon, which he says is a “jeweled dagger from a Renaissance fair.”

That was all the evidence school authorities needed to expel Yousefi for the semester and launch a district-wide information-gathering program aimed at discovering security threats and identifying gang members. The subsequent investigation led to a series of expulsions of students who were found posing on social media holding guns or throwing gang signs.

School administrators say the wider surveillance program was conducted at the behest of the NSA, but the security agency now denies it ever called the school.

Submission + - Calling Mr Orwell, rejigged executive order makes collecting data not collecting (techdirt.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: '...it is often the case that one can be led astray by relying on the generic or commonly understood definition of a particular word.' Specifically words offering constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. TechDirt looks at the redefinition of the term collection as redefined by Executive Order 12333 to allow basically every information dragnet, provided no-one looks at it. "Collection" is now defined as "collection plus action." According to this document, ot still isn't collected, even if its been gathered, packaged and sent to a "supervisory authority." No collection happens until examination. It's Schroedinger's data, neither collected nor uncollected until the "box" has been opened. This leads to the question of aging off collected data/communications: if certain (non) collections haven't been examined at the end of the 5-year storage limit, are they allowed to be retained simply because they haven't officially been collected yet? Does the timer start when the "box" is opened or when the "box" is filled?

Submission + - California Gov Brown Vetoes Bill Requiring Warrants for Drone Surveillance (latimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Brown, a Democrat facing re-election in November, sided with law enforcement and said the legislation simply granted Californians privacy rights that went too far beyond existing guarantees. Sunday's veto comes as the small drones are becoming increasingly popular with business, hobbyists, and law enforcement.

"This bill prohibits law enforcement from using a drone without obtaining a search warrant, except in limited circumstances," the governor said in his veto message(PDF). "There are undoubtedly circumstances where a warrant is appropriate. The bill's exceptions, however, appear to be too narrow and could impose requirements beyond what is required by either the 4th Amendment or the privacy provisions in the California Constitution."

At least 10 other states require the police to get a court warrant to surveil with a drone. Those states include Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.

California's drone bill is not draconian. It includes exceptions for emergency situations, search-and-rescue efforts, traffic first responders, and inspection of wildfires. It allows other public agencies to use drones for other purposes—just not law enforcement.

Submission + - Sierra Nevada protests NASA manned spacecraft contact award

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Sierra Nevada has formally protested NASA’s decision to award Boeing and SpaceX manned spacecraft contracts.

The company said late Friday that its bid in the NASA Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCTCap) was $900 million less than the bid submitted by Boeing, which won a contract worth as much as $4.2 billion to complete development, test fly and operate its CST-100 crew capsule. At the same time, SNC said, its proposal was “near equivalent [in] technical and past performance” source-selection scoring.

“[T]he official NASA solicitation for the CCtCap contract prioritized price as the primary evaluation criteria for the proposals, setting it equal to the combined value of the other two primary evaluation criteria: mission suitability and past performance,” the company stated. “SNC’s Dream Chaser proposal was the second lowest priced proposal in the CCtCap competition.”

In other words, they are challenging NASA’s decision to pick Boeing over them, as their proposal was far cheaper.

We all know that Boeing got the contract as much for its political clout as for its technical expertise. NASA wanted to make sure that members of Congress who promote the Boeing jobs in their districts would have nothing to complain about. Whether Sierra Nevada can get the government to look past that political clout is very doubtful.

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