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Censorship

Submission + - American Censorship Day Is Tomorrow (11/16/11) (feld.com)

Submitted by foxxlf25
foxxlf25 writes: There are two very disturbing bills making their way through Congress: Protect IP Act (PIPA — S.968) and Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA – H.R.3261). In these times when everyone is focused on keeping bread on their table, big media and congress look to undermine our rights. Check out the story to find out how you can voice your opposition to this bill aimed at censoring the Internet and the American public.
Math

Submission + - Mathematically pattern-free music (ted.com)

Submitted by gary.flake
gary.flake writes: Scott Rickard set out to do what no musician has ever tried — to make the world’s ugliest piece of music. At TEDxMIA, he discusses the math and science behind creating a piece of music devoid of any pattern. He used mathematics of Évariste Galois (who was born 200 years ago) to create pattern-free sonar pings which he mapped to notes on a piano, and then played them using the non-rhythm of a Golomb Ruler. Now, why didn't I think of that...
The Courts

Submission + - DHS Ignores Court Ruling to Take Public Comment on (epic.org)

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes: On Saturday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center announced that they filed papers in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to get the Department of Homeland Security to start its public comment process. In July the court ordered DHS to take public comment on airport body scanning, in accordance with federal law. The court allowed DHS and TSA to continue using scanners during the comment period. According to EPIC's filing the ruling against DHS became final on September 21 after EPIC's motion for a rehearing was denied. Since then, DHS has done nothing to comply with the order. EPIC wants DHS to release details for their public comment period process within 45 days. DHS is no stranger to the kind of notice and comment rulemaking that is being required of them. Earlier public comment on their Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP), which would have required draconian security on aircraft 10% of the size of a Boeing 737, did not go so well. They received 7400 comments 'vehemently opposed' to LASP in 2008 and 2009 and are still reworking the plan in response to the comments received. How will DHS manage the public comment period for body scanners, which directly affects many millions more Americans than LASP does? Would DHS prefer to take their chances in court, including an appeal to the Supreme Court if need be, rather than face the public over their body scanners?
Idle

Submission + - Exploding Toilet Injures Two Government Workers (discovery.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Two toilets exploded in the General Services Administration building, hospitalizing two workers (who were in separate bathrooms, evidently). The physics is sort of interesting: older water systems operate using air to force the water through at the right pressure, but if there is some problem in the system enough pressure can build to cause the commodes to crack. Plumbers: please weigh in.
Science

Submission + - People That Remember Every Day Of Their Lives (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "What did you do on this day ten years ago? What day of the week was it? What was the weather like? I can’t remember either. But for a very few, very special people, they can answer these questions for that day and for any other day of their lives beyond a certain young age. This new type of superior memory – termed hyperthymesia – has only recently been discovered and not much is known about it at all. But since the first case was documented in 2006 others with this ‘condition’ have come forward for researchers to study."
Privacy

Submission + - VPN Service Snitched on Alleged LulzSec Member (securityweek.com) 2

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Yesterday, Cody Kretsinger, a 23-year-old from Phoenix, Arizona was arrested and charged with conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.

How did the Feds track down the alleged LulzSec member? It turns out that a VPN service reportedly used to mask his online identify and location was the one who handed over data to the FBI.

According to the federal indictment, Kretsinger registered for a VPN account at HideMyAss.Com under the user name “recursion”. Following that, the indictment said that Kretsinger and other unknown conspirators conducted SQL injection attacks against Sony Pictures in attempt to extract confidential data.

“At a later date it came as no surprise to have received a court order asking for information relating to an account associated with some or all of the above cases,” they wrote in the post this morning. “As stated in our terms of service and privacy policy our service is not to be used for illegal activity, and as a legitimate company we will cooperate with law enforcement if we receive a court order (equivalent of a subpoena in the US).”

You can be sure that HideMyAss is not the only provider to be hit with subpoenas to hand over user data. It’s likely the FBI and other officials are digging deep and requesting similar information from other VPN providers and online services such as Pastebin, Twitter, and other tools and web services commonly used by hackers.

Submission + - FCC Finalizes US Net Neutrality Rules (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by milbournosphere
milbournosphere writes: The FCC has finally finalized their proposed rules regarding net neutrality. They go into effect on 20 November, a year after they passed in a 3-2 vote.

FCC's summary of their rules:
"First, transparency: fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and commercial terms of their broadband services. Second, no blocking: fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services. Third, no unreasonable discrimination: fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic."

It should be noted that some of the language is a little ambiguous; who is to decide what constitutes 'unreasonable discrimination'?
Security

Submission + - Hackers Raid Mass Killer's Email Accounts for Info (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: After the recent hacking of Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik Behring's Twitter account, it seems that the same group of hackers has also decided to compromise two of his email accounts. They sent the information they found within the accounts to Norwegian freelance investigative reporter Kjetil Stormark and asked him to deliver it to the police. A wise decision, especially for a group of hackers allegedly led by a 17-year-old, since Norway's strong source protection law should protect their identities from being exposed.

Submission + - Court Says Sending Too Many Emails Is Hacking (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An appeals court has ruled that having people send a company a lot of emails (in this case, a union protesting a company's business practices) qualifies as hacking under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. We're not even talking about a true DDoS action here, but just a bunch of protest emails. Part of the problem is that the company apparently set up their email to only hold a small number of emails in their inbox, and the court seems to think the union should take the blame for stuffing those inboxes.
Facebook

Submission + - Germany: Facebook's Facial Recognition is illegal (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "Although we think it's generally a pretty nifty feature, valid concerns over the misuse of Facebook's auto-recognition tagging have lead Germany to ban it entirely. That's right—Facebook in its current state is now illegal. Deep Scheiße, Zuckerberg.

The German government—which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse—considers The Book's facial recognition a violation of "the right to anonymity," The Atlantic reports."
Government

Submission + - NSA Hiring At Black Hat (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "It may seem strange that the US government would be recruiting tech talent at Black Hat, a security conference whose participants have a notorious ambivalence about keeping within the letter of the law. But the NSA — a shadowy organization with its own reputation for dodgy behavior — is there recruiting, and pitching itself as a haven for geeks."

Submission + - Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the "debt ceiling" issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the US. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public. The meeting is being held in secret, but it's not classified, so people can demand to know how their Senator voted.
Music

Submission + - Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Celebrated online music player Spotify just entered the US market a few weeks ago, and already it's being sued for patent infringement. Welcome to America! The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music. The company suing, PacketVideo, has no competing product. It just wants money from the company that actually innovated.
Privacy

Submission + - Flying Drone Can Sniff WiFi & Snoop on Cell Ph (forbes.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: "At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year’s worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillace Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perkins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD cameras, a cigarette-pack sized on-board Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools including the BackTrack testing toolset, a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae.

“This is like Black Hat’s greatest hits,” Tassey says. “And it flies.”

On top of cracking wifi networks, this year WASP also performs a new trick: impersonating the GSM cell phone towers used by AT&T and T-Mobile to trick phones into connecting to the plane rather than their carrier, allowing the drone to record conversations and text messages on a 32 gigs of storage. A 4G T-mobile card routes the connection through voice-over-Internet or traditional voice connections to avoid dropping the call. "
Science

Submission + - New NASA Data Blows Gaping Hole in Global Warming (forbes.com)

Submitted by d3ac0n
d3ac0n writes: NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. (PDF Warning)The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

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