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Submission + - German NSA critic denied entry to the US

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Major newspapers in Germany (FAZ, Die Welt, SZ, ...) and the Huffington Post report that the author Ilja Trojanow has been denied to board a plane from Salvador da Bahia to the US where he was invited to attend a conference. He had ESTA documents showing that his visit was approved as part of the Visa Waiver Program and was last year given a visa to teach at the university of Saint Louis. Trojanow was one of the initiators of an open letter urging Chancellor Merkel to take actions against NSA surveillance in Germany.

Submission + - Health Insurance Exchanges Buckle Under Flood of Enrollees (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Less than 15 hours after going live, more than 2.8 million people had visited the U.S. Health and Human Service's healthcare website seeking information on how to use health insurance exchanges (HIX) in order to find affordable plans under the Accountable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Citizens who apply for healthcare insurance on the open exchange by Dec. 15, will be able to receive coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2014. Those who wait until after Dec. 15 to apply will receive coverage at a later date. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the HIXes said they've received 7 times greater traffic than the Medicare website ever saw. One of the most cited problems by those attempting to sign up for healthcare insurance online was an issue associated with creating a password, which protects the enrollee's identity. Yet another problem was accessing a 24/7 instant message helpline. "We are making improvements as we speak. What we're hearing from other issuers is that problems are being resolved," Tavenner said. "This is day one of a six-month process," said Marilyn Tavenner, administrator for the CMS.

Submission + - Ubuntu 13.10 Will Not Ship Mir By Default (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu 13.10 due for release later this month was poised to replace the X.Org Server with Mir/XMir as Canonical's next-generation Ubuntu display server. However, they have now decided Mir will not be the Ubuntu 13.10 default over outstanding issues with the XMir X11 compatibility layer having multi-monitor issues and other problems. Canonical though still says they will use Mir for Ubuntu Touch 13.10 images and remain committed to the Mir project.

Submission + - French Gendarmerie: Open source desktop lowers TCO by 40% (europa.eu)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: Using an open source desktop lowers the total cost of ownership by 40%, in savings on proprietary software licences and by reducing costs on IT management. Using Ubuntu Linux massively reduces the number of local technical interventions, says Major Stéphane Dumond. "The direct benefits of saving on licences are the tip of the iceberg. An industrialised open source desktop is a powerful lever for IT governance."

Submission + - Deep Blue Group : How could Snowden and Navy Yard killer get top security cleara (telegram.com) 1

Submitted by rianrush
rianrush writes: Deep Blue Group : How could Snowden and Navy Yard killer get top security clearances?

The calls and emails from top executives came toward the end of each month, former managers at USIS recalled. The company needed to swiftly complete investigating security clearances for the government in order to reach its monthly revenue goal, the managers said they were told. Finally, there was an order: "Flush" everything you've got.

The directive to give quick final approval of background investigations without reviewing them for quality — known as flushing — was sent, the managers said, to a branch office of USIS, a company whose 700,000 yearly security checks for the government have included those of Edward J. Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, and Aaron Alexis, who the police say shot and killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last week.

In interviews this week, former and current USIS employees detailed how the company had an incentive to rush work because it is paid only after a file is marked "FF," for fieldwork finished, and sent to the government. In the waning days of a month, investigations were closed to meet financial quotas, without a required review by the quality control department, two former senior managers said.

The details of how its contract was structured provide new insight into the workings of USIS, a company that is now the focus of two federal inquiries, including a grand jury investigation in Washington, according to congressional testimony and people with knowledge of the proceedings.

The federal Office of Personnel Management confirmed that it pays USIS on a piecework basis. "The vendor is paid upon the delivery of a completed case," the agency said in a statement. People familiar with the contract said it was intended to give the company an incentive to be efficient.

USIS, based in Falls Church, Va., and the largest outside investigator for security clearances for the federal government, declined to comment.

A person familiar with the USIS corporate structure said that two top executives, a division president and the chief financial officer, had been fired after being found responsible for ordering the flushing.

Continue Reading.http://www.telegram.com/article/20130928/NEWS/309289906/1116

READ MORE :
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Submission + - LinkedIn Agrees to Block Stalkers (boxfreeit.com.au) 2

Submitted by sholto
sholto writes: When Buzzfeed wrote about LinkedIn's stalker problem in June, LinkedIn claimed it had enough privacy tools "to effectively minimize unwanted connections". But a petition by a 24-year-old Ohio woman sexually assaulted by her boss and harassed through the network appears to have won the day for privacy advocates.
“Users on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other sites can easily block other users. LinkedIn appears to be an outlier among other top social media sites,” said petitioner Anna R.

Submission + - Saudi Cleric Pummeled On Twitter For Claiming Driving Damages Women's Ovaries (cnn.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CNN reports, "...Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan's widely derided remarks have gone viral ... "If a woman drives a car," Al-Loheidan told Saudi news website sabq.org ... "it could have a negative physiological impact ... it would automatically affect a woman's ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward." ... "We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their children are born with varying degrees of clinical problems." The controversial comments ... were widely interpreted throughout Saudi Arabia as an attempt to discourage women in the country from joining a popular online movement urging them to stage a demonstration by driving cars on October 26. "This is his answer to the campaign," Saudi women's rights activist Aziza Yousef told CNN. ... "He's making a fool of himself. He shouldn't touch this field at all ..." ... Al-Loheidan's words have been ridiculed mercilessly via social media ... An Arabic Twitter hashtag called "#WomensDrivingAffectsOvariesAndPelvises" was quickly created to make fun of Al-Loheidan — underscoring just how widely the call for Saudi women to defy the driving ban has resonated thus far. And while numerous conservative voices have supported Al-Loheidan, many Saudis believe this was an extremely clumsy way of trying to counter the popularity of the October 26 campaign."

Submission + - SPAM: New Novel Technology to Produce Gasoline by a Metabolically-Engineered Microorga

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For many decades, we have been relying on fossil resources to produce liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and many industrial and consumer chemicals for daily use. However, increasing strains on natural resources as well as environmental issues including global warming have triggered a strong interest in developing sustainable ways to obtain fuels and chemicals. A Korean research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) reported, for the first time, the development of a novel strategy for microbial gasoline production through metabolic engineering of E. coli.

Submission + - NSA Internet Spying Sparks Race to Create Offshore Havens for Data Privacy (wsj.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: "Countries are competing to be the Cayman Islands of data privacy"

Nevertheless, some European leaders are renewing calls for a "euro cloud," in which consumer data could be shared within Europe but not outside the region. Brazil is fast-tracking a vote on a once-dormant bill that could require that data about Brazilians be stored on servers in the country. And India plans to ban government employees from using email services from Google and Yahoo Inc.

It is too soon to tell if a major shift is under way. But the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that fallout from revelations about NSA activities could cost Silicon Valley up to $35 billion in annual revenue, much of it from lost overseas business. A survey conducted this summer by the Cloud Security Alliance, an industry group, found that 56% of non-U.S. members said security concerns made it less likely that they would use U.S.-based cloud services. Ten percent said they had canceled a contract.

Even some companies that seek to profit from fears about U.S. snooping acknowledge that law-enforcement agencies in other countries want to catch up with Washington's capabilities. "In the long run, there won't be any difference between what the U.S. or Germany or France or the U.K. is doing," says Roberto Valerio, whose German cloud-storage company, CloudSafe GmbH, reports a 25% rise in business since the NSA revelations. "At the end of the day, some agency will spy on you," he says.

Submission + - Google may face fine under EU privacy laws (cmo.com.au)

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: Google faces financial sanctions in France after failing to comply with an order to alter how it stores and shares user data to conform to the nation's privacy laws. The enforcement follows an analysis led by European data protection authorities of a new privacy policy that Google enacted in 2012. France's privacy watchdog, the Commission Nationale de L'Informatique et des Libertes, in June ordered Google to comply with French data protection laws within three months. But Google had not changed its policies to comply with French laws by a deadline last week.

Submission + - 3mm Inexpensive Chip Revolutionizes Electron Accelerators (natmonitor.com) 1

Submitted by AaronW
AaronW writes: Scientists and engineers at the US DOE SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have discovered an advanced accelerator technology smaller than a grain of rice. It is currently accelerating electrons at 300 million volts per meter with a goal of achieving 1 billion EV per meter. It could do in 100 feet what the SLAC linear accelerator does in two miles and could achieve a million more electron pulses per second. This could lead to more compact accelerators and X-ray devices.

Submission + - Round-Up of OpenGL Implementations by the Dolphin Emu Team (dolphin-emu.org)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: At the beginning of this year, two guys started rewriting the Dolphin Nintendo GameCube/Wii emulator OpenGL backend to be compliant with ES 3.0. Their motivation was to better support mobile platforms and enable the use of some cool optimization techniques. During the process they wrote some notes about the quality of various OpenGL implementations. To summarize, they found the following.

NVIDIA was almost perfect on all operating systems. The open source Mesa implementation was surprisingly good, even without massive QA resources behind it, and bug reports received a friendly response. Intel HD Graphics on Windows, while not cutting-edge performance, was mostly bug-free. AMD's Linux and Windows drivers are OK, but ship with handful of major bugs. ARM/Mali was bad: only binary blobs with bad performance. Qualcomm/Adreno was a nightmare and PowerVR solution remains untested as it does not support ES 3.0.

Submission + - Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before (wired.com)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: It is now 30 years since I launched the campaign for freedom in computing, that is, for software to be free or “libre” (we use that word to emphasize that we’re talking about freedom, not price). Some proprietary programs are very expensive, others are available gratis — either way, they subject their users to someone else’s power. That’s the fundamental issue: while non-free software and SaaSS are controlled by some other entity (typically a corporation or a state), free software is controlled by its users. Why does this control matter? Because freedom means having control over your own life.

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