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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 224 declined, 47 accepted (271 total, 17.34% accepted)

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Submission + - Congress passes 'Unlimited Access to Communications of Every American'

Submitted by mi
mi writes: A provision of "Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2015" passing through Congress would create an Executive government's right to collect all communications of Americans. The Executive is already doing it claiming "executive authority", but they will no longer need to. In "exchange" the bill mandates deleting all such records within five years, which is the current practice anyway. Congressman Justin Amash (R-Michigan) is raising awareness.

Submission + - US Navy authorizes use of laser in combat (usni.org)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: The U.S. Navy is has declared an experimental laser weapon on its Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) in the Persian Gulf an operational asset and U.S. Central Command has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon.

The 30 kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed aboard USS Ponce this summer as part of a $40 million research and development effort from ONR and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to test the viability of directed energy weapons in an operational environment.

No word yet on a smaller, shark-mounted version.

Submission + - Supersonic passenger jets are coming (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: It's been more than ten years since Concorde made its final transatlantic flight. But there's a new generation of supersonic passenger aircraft beginning to emerge, boasting speeds at least twice as fast as current commercial planes.

Available — like most things — for the rich initially, the plans call for supersonic travel to become available to the poorly washed masses in early 2020-ies.

Submission + - Liars, damned liars, and Michael Brown witnesses (ap.org)

Submitted by mi
mi writes:

Some witnesses said Michael Brown had been shot in the back. Another said he was face-down on the ground when Officer Darren Wilson "finished him off." Still others acknowledged changing their stories to fit published details about the autopsy or admitted that they did not see the shooting at all. An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents reveals numerous examples of statements made during the shooting investigation that were inconsistent, fabricated or provably wrong. For one, the autopsies ultimately showed Brown was not struck by any bullets in his back.

All of these witnesses testified under oath. Will any of them be now prosecuted for perjury?

Submission + - Court allows police to force you to unlock your phone with fingerprint (hamptonroads.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: A Circuit Court judge in Virginia has ruled that fingerprints are not protected by the Fifth Amendment. Says the judge: "while a criminal defendant can't be compelled to hand over a passcode to police officers for the purpose of unlocking a cellular device, law enforcement officials can compel a defendant to give up a fingerprint."

Don't know about you, but I'll stick to using a code, thank you very much.

Submission + - Obama Administration argues for backdoors in personal electronics (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on Tuesday that new forms of encryption capable of locking law enforcement officials out of popular electronic devices imperil investigations of kidnappers and sexual predators, putting children at increased risk.

Seriously. Would somebody, please, think of the children?!

Submission + - Facebook's Ukrainian office is in Russia. Blocks Ukrainians...

Submitted by mi
mi writes: Ukrainian media are reporting (link in Ukrainian), that Facebook is getting increasingly heavy-handed blocking Ukrainian bloggers. The likely explanation for the observed phenomenon is that Facebook's Ukrainian office is located in Russia and is headed by a Russian citizen (Catherine Skorobogatov). For example, a post calling on Russian mothers to not let their sons go to war was blocked "Due to multiple complaints". Fed up, Ukrainian users are writing directly to Zukerberg to ask him to replace Catherine with someone, who would not be quite as swayed by the "complaints" generated by Russian bots. The last link (in both Ukrainian and English) is also on Facebook. Will it survive for long?

Submission + - Certified "green" buildings consume more energy than regular structures (dailycaller.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: The "greenness" of a building is measured as EUIs — the higher the number, the more energy the structure is consuming relative to its size. Environmentally-aware construction is supposed to have the LEED-certification by U.S. Green Building Council (a private environment-protection group).

Washington, DC was the first city to mandate LEED-certifications for all new construction in 2010. Today the city-wide average EUI for LEED-certified buildings is 205, whereas the non-certified buildings average 199...

Submission + - Lenders look at social media to check on loan-applicants (wsj.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: We know about Human Resources departments checking job-applicants online. Well, the lenders are catching up too. Writes Wall Street Journal:

Lending companies are looking at potential problems such as whether applicants put the same job information on their loan application as they posted on LinkedIn, or if they shared on Facebook that they had been let go by an employer. A small business that draws negative reviews on eBay also could undermine its chances of getting more credit, lending companies say.

Myself having neither Facebook, nor Twitter, nor LinkedIn accounts, I am wondering, if I am at a disadvantage — these are the people, who already consider imperfect credit history to be better, than no credit history at all...

Submission + - Britney Spears' music used to deter pirates (mirror.co.uk)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: Blasting Western music seems quite effective against the people, who hate Western culture in general, according to the article in Mirror Online, and Britney Spears' tunes proved to be a great deterrent indeed. Second Officer Rachel from Aberfoyle in Scotland said: “Her songs have been chosen by the security team accompanying our tankers because they thought the pirates would hate them most."

The music is currently used as a second line of defence and is broadcast when initial calls from armed security guards on board fail to deter the pirates. The speakers can be aimed solely at the pirates so as not to disturb the crew. “They’re so effective the ship’s security rarely needs to resort to firing guns," — says Rachel.

Steven Jones, of the Security Association for the Maritime Industry, said the US police and military were the first to use music to quell rioters.

Security industry is well aware of the power of music — and is cautious not to exceed humane limits. Justin Bieber, for example, is not used, because officials are wary of violating Geneva Conventions.

Submission + - NASDAQ shut down earlier today and is struggling to get up

Submitted by mi
mi writes: The NASDAQ exchange has abruptly halted all trading in early afternoon today, August 22, 2013. At the time of this writing (15:32) they remain down despite the earlier promises to reopen at 14:45, 15:10, 15:25...

The nature of the problem remains a mystery and may turn out to be anything — from a varmint chewing through some critical wire to the decision to switch to Microsoft back in 2005.

Submission + - Companies in China learn to bypass government's firewall (scmp.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: According to the article in South China Morning Post, it is common for corporations in the country to reach out to the "real" Internet by using their own lines out to Hong-Kong. Recently, some luxury hotels started offering the access to guests. Of course, some sort of "communications with the local government" have taken place before this apparent violation of the country's federal law was attempted.

I, for one, can't wait for these folks to start getting a bigger say on how the Internet operates.

Submission + - Computer keeps sending cops to the same house (nydailynews.com) 1

Submitted by
mi
mi writes: "

Embarrassed cops on Thursday cited a "computer glitch" as the reason police targeted the home of an elderly, law-abiding couple more than 50 times in futile hunts for bad guys. Apparently, the address of Walter and Rose Martin's Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002

Police have tried to remove the address from their databases for years, but it keeps popping up... This is the scariest part of the government collecting personal data — they can't expunge it, even if they sincerely try to... And if they are even a bit insincere, they can always explain keeping it by a "computer glitch"."

Democrats

Submission + - Leak of Congress' ethics-investigators documents (breitbart.com)

Submitted by
mi
mi writes: "A document describing investigations of the House Ethics committee was accidentally leaked through peer-to-peer software running on a PC of a "junior employee" working from home. Although the employee was quickly fired, the embarrassing details are now well known.
At the time of this typing, no mention of the documents on WikiLeaks. Not yet..."
Spam

Submission + - Nigeria shuts down scam websites (breitbart.com)

Submitted by
mi
mi writes: "Nigeria's anti-corruption police said Friday they had shut down some 800 scam websites and busted 18 syndicates of email fraudsters in a drive to curb cyber-crime the country is notorious for. 18 arrests were made. Maybe, the amount of "From the Desk of Dr. Foo Bar" e-mails will drop for a while."

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