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Comment Re:Fuck. (Score 2) 116

by zlives (#49089317) Attached to: The Disastrous Privacy Consequences of Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill

the question really isn't about privacy, but rather about freedom. Not the freedom as is touted but rather freedom from consequences of no-privacy.
repercussions of free speech without the protection of anonymity would be one. Just look at any whistle blower in recent history. That is at a governmental scale. However just think about having your private words, pictures, correspondence in public domain with the narrow minded social infrastructure that current US society displays in its fervor...
Make a provocative comment and be censured from work, friends and future prospects...

I am willing to buy the argument, if you are not guilty you shouldn't have anything to hide when the society is at a socially elevated level to accept people as they are without judgement... and no I won't hold my breath for that to happen.

Submission + - Google: FBI's Plan to Expand Hacking Power a 'Monumental' Constitutional Threat (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Any change in accessing computer data should go through Congress, the search giant said.

The search giant submitted public comments earlier this week opposing a Justice Department proposal that would grant judges more leeway in how they can approve search warrants for electronic data.

The push to change an arcane federal rule "raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal, and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide," wrote Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement and information security.

The provision, known as Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, generally permits judges to grant search warrants only within the bounds of their judicial district. Last year, the Justice Department petitioned a judicial advisory committee to amend the rule to allow judges to approve warrants outside their jurisdictions or in cases where authorities are unsure where a computer is located.

Google, in its comments, blasted the desired rule change as overly vague, saying the proposal could authorize remote searches on the data of millions of Americans simultaneously—particularly those who share a network or router—and cautioned it rested on shaky legal footing.

Submission + - Could fossils of ancient life from Earth reside on the Moon? (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: Does the moon contain fossils of billions of years old organisms from Earth? That theory has been laid out in recent research at the Imperial College of London, reported in a story in Air and Space Magazine by Dr. Paul Spudis, a lunar and planetary geologist. The implications for science and future lunar exploration are profound.

Submission + - Google faces anti-trust probe in Russia over Android (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Google has a new battle on its hands, this time in the form of a potential anti-trust probe in Russia. Yandex, the internet company behind the eponymous Russian search engine, has filed a complaint to the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). Yandex claims that the US search giant is abusing its position by bundling Google services with Android.

It claims that users are forced into using the Google ecosystem including Google Search, and that it is difficult to install competing services on smartphones and tablets. There are distinct echoes of the antitrust lawsuits Microsoft has faced for its bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.

Submission + - Break Through In Face Recognition Software (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Face recognition software underwent a revolution in 2001 with the creation of the Viola-Jones algorithm. Now, the field looks set to dramatically improve once again: computer scientists from Stanford and Yahoo Labs have published a new, simple approach that can find faces turned at an angle and those that are partially blocked by something else. The researchers "capitalize on the advances made in recent years on a type of machine learning known as a deep convolutional neural network. The idea is to train a many-layered neural network using a vast database of annotated examples, in this case pictures of faces from many angles. To that end, Farfade and co created a database of 200,000 images that included faces at various angles and orientations and a further 20 million images without faces. They then trained their neural net in batches of 128 images over 50,000 iterations. ... What’s more, their algorithm is significantly better at spotting faces when upside down, something other approaches haven’t perfected."

Submission + - The NSA 0wns Your Hard Drives Firmware

Submitted by BarbaraHudson
BarbaraHudson writes: From the so-what-else-is-new dept

The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers.

Kaspersky's analysis says the NSA made a breakthrough by infecting hard disk firmware with malware known only as nls_933w.dll capable of persisting across machine wipes to re-infect targeted systems.

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, which are closely linked to Stuxnet. Targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists.

A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky's analysis was correct. Another former intelligence operative also confirmed that the NSA had developed the technique of concealing spyware in the firmware of hard drives.

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