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Submission + - Bill allows government to revoke Americans' passports without charges or trial (policestateusa.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would allow the government to restrict Americans' travel through the revocation of passports based upon mere suspicions of unscrupulous activity. This bill represents another dangerous step forward in the war on terror and the disintegration of American due process.

H.R. 237, the "FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) Passport Revocation Act of 2015," will allow the U.S. Secretary of State the unchecked authority to prohibit individuals from traveling internationally. According to the bill, the Secretary may unilaterally revoke (or refuse to issue) a passport from "any individual whom the Secretary has determined has aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise helped an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization pursuant to section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189)."

The bill did not bother to define what the terms "aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise helped" actually mean, in legal terms. The power has been left open-ended so that it can mean whatever the secretary wants it to mean. Needless to say, a bill like this would be easily abused.

The travel restriction requires no presumption of innocence for the targeted individual; no explanation; no public presentation of evidence; no opportunity for a defense; no checks and balances on the power. The bill does not outline any appeals process for the targeted individual. The only stipulation is that the Secretary of State must issue a report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs — "classified or unclassified." The bill does not state that either committee can reverse the secretary's decisions.

Submission + - The real price of Windows 10 is your privacy (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Windows 10 is a free upgrade, right? Well, surely you know by now that there's no such thing as a free lunch. We're only 48 hours on from the launch of Windows 10 and already the complaining and criticism is underway. One thing that has been brought under the spotlight is privacy under the latest version of Microsoft's operating system.

Some people have been surprised to learn that Microsoft is utilizing the internet connections of Windows 10 users to deliver Windows Updates to others. But this is far from being the end of it. Cortana also gives cause for concern, and then there is the issue of Microsoft Edge, and ads in apps. Is this a price you're willing to pay?

Windows 10 is more closely tied to a Microsoft account than any previous version of the OS. This allows Microsoft to assign an ID number to users that can then be used to track them across different devices, services, and apps. This in turn can be used to deliver closely targeted ads to people. Microsoft has been pushing the mobile first, cloud first philosophy for some time now, and it becomes clear with Windows 10 that the love of the cloud is as much to do with the ability it gives Microsoft to gather useful data as it is about convenience for users.

Submission + - Questioning The Dispute over Key Escrow (counterpunch.org)

Submitted by Nicola Hahn
Nicola Hahn writes: "The topic of key escrow encryption has once again taken center stage as former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has spoken out against key escrow both at this year’s Aspen Security Forum and in an op-ed published recently by the Washington Post. However the debate over cryptographic back doors has a glaring blind spot. As the trove of leaks from Hacking Team highlights, most back doors are implemented using zero-day exploits. Keep in mind that the Snowden documents reveal cooperation across the tech industry, on behalf of the NSA, to make products that were "exploitable". Hence, there are people who question whether the whole discussion over key escrow includes an element of theater. Is it, among other things, a public relations gambit, in the wake of the PRISM scandal, intended to cast Silicon Valley companies as defenders of privacy?"

Submission + - Will Autonomous Cars Be the Insurance Industry's Napster Moment? (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Most of us are looking forward to the advent of autonomous vehicles. Not only will they free up a lot of time to previously spent staring straight ahead at the bumper of the car in front of you, they'll also presumably make commuting a lot safer. While that's great news for the 30,000+ people who die in traffic accidents every year in the U.S., it may not be great news for insurance companies. Granted, they'll have to pay out a lot less money with the lower number of claims, but premiums will necessarily drop as well and the overall amount of money within the car insurance system will dwindle. Analysts are warning these companies that their business is going to shrink. It will be interesting to see if they adapt to the change, or cling desperately to an outdated business model like the entertainment industry did. "One opportunity for the industry could be selling more coverage to carmakers and other companies developing the automated features for cars. ... When the technology fails, manufacturers could get stuck with big liabilities that they will want to cover by buying more insurance. There’s also a potential for cars to get hacked as they become more networked."

Submission + - FBI Director James Comey to Citizens: "Encrypted Messaging Not Needed" (usnews.com)

Submitted by davesays
davesays writes: FBI Director James Comey expressed alarm Wednesday about broadening use of encrypted communications, telling senators that investigators increasingly are unable to intercept or retrieve suspects’ messages. Apparently he has no Slashdot account — "“I haven’t met ordinary folks who say, ‘I really want a device that can’t be opened even if an American judge finds it ought to be opened,’” Comey said. and goes on to say authorities ‘will go to jail' if they look at American Snapchat messages, Instagram posts without a warrant.

Forgive me for not taking him at his word.

Submission + - OwnStar Device Can Remotely Find, Unlock and Start GM Cars

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Car hacking just jumped up a few levels. A security researcher has built a small device that can intercept the traffic from the OnStar RemoteLink mobile app and give him persistent access to a user’s vehicle to locate, unlock, and start it.

The device is called OwnStar and it’s the creation of Samy Kamkar, a security researcher and hardware hacker who makes a habit of finding clever ways around the security of various systems, including garage doors, wireless keyboards, and drones. His newest creation essentially allows him to take remote control of users’ vehicles simply by sending a few special packets to the OnStar service. The attack is a car thief’s dream.

Kamkar said that by standing near a user who has the RemoteLink mobile app open, he can use the OwnStar device to intercept requests from the app to the OnStar service. He can then take over control of the functions that RemoteLink handles, including unlocking and remotely starting the vehicle.

Submission + - Facebook Shares Diversity Training that's Made it 1% Blacker than the KKK 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: VentureBeat can't resist pointing out the chutzpah of still-overwhelmingly-white-and-male-Facebook releasing diversity training to help others unlearn bias. Follow Facebook's tips for Managing Unconscious Bias, kids, and your company could also boast of having a tech staff that's 1% Black! Facebook's diversity slides and references, by the way, can be found at 0.30% Black-tech-employees Dropbox.

Submission + - Stretchable Conducting Fiber Provides Super Hero Capabilities (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The list of potential applications for a new electrically conducting fiber-artificial muscles, exoskeletons and morphing aircraft-sounds like something out of science fiction or a comic book. With a list like that, it's got to be a pretty special fiber... and it is. The fiber, made from sheets of carbon nanotubes wrapped around a rubber core, can be stretched to 14 times its original length and actually increase its electrical conductivity while being stretched, without losing any of its resistance.

Submission + - Metal Foam: radiation shielding that's lighter and twice as effective as Alumin (kurzweilai.net)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: North Carolina State University researchers have found that lightweight composite metal foams they had developed are effective at blocking X-rays, gamma rays, and neutron radiation, and are capable of absorbing the energy of high-impact collisions. The finding holds promise for use in nuclear power plants, space exploration, and CT-scanner shielding.

This work means there's an opportunity to use composite metal foam to develop safer systems for transporting nuclear waste, more efficient designs for spacecraft and nuclear structures, and new shielding for use in CT scanners

Submission + - Plan To Run Anti-Google Smear Campaign Revealed in MPAA Emails

Submitted by vivaoporto
vivaoporto writes: Techdirt reports a plan to run anti-Google smear campaign via Today Show and WSJ discovered in MPAA Emails.

Despite the resistance of the Hollywood studios to comply with the subpoenas obtained by Google concerning their relationship with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (whose investigation of the company appeared to actually be run by the MPAA and the studios themselves) one of the few emails that Google have been able to get access to so far was revealed this Thursday in a filling. It's an email between the MPAA and two of Jim Hood's top lawyers in the Mississippi AG's office, discussing the big plan to "hurt" Google.

The lawyers from Hood's office flat out admit that they're expecting the MPAA and the major studios to have its media arms run a coordinated propaganda campaign of bogus anti-Google stories:

Media: We want to make sure that the media is at the NAAG meeting. We propose working with MPAA (Vans), Comcast, and NewsCorp (Bill Guidera) to see about working with a PR firm to create an attack on Google (and others who are resisting AG efforts to address online piracy). This PR firm can be funded through a nonprofit dedicated to IP issues. The "live buys" should be available for the media to see, followed by a segment the next day on the Today Show (David green can help with this). After the Today Show segment, you want to have a large investor of Google (George can help us determine that) come forward and say that Google needs to change its behavior/demand reform. Next, you want NewsCorp to develop and place an editorial in the WSJ emphasizing that Google's stock will lose value in the face of a sustained attack by AGs and noting some of the possible causes of action we have developed.

As Google notes in its legal filing about this email, the "plan" states that if this effort fails, then the next step will be to file the subpoena (technically a CID or "civil investigatory demand") on Google, written by the MPAA but signed by Hood.

As Google points out, this makes it pretty clear that the MPAA, studios and Hood were working hand in hand in all of this and that the subpoena had no legitimate purpose behind it, but rather was the final step in a coordinated media campaign to pressure Google to change the way its search engine works.

Submission + - AMD clocks 500x spreadsheet speed boost via hardware acceleration in LibreOffice (amd.com)

Submitted by samtuke
samtuke writes: AMD processors get rated and reviewed based on performance. It is in our self-interest to make things work really, really fast on AMD hardware. AMD engineers contribute to LibreOffice, for good reason. Think about what happens behind a spreadsheet calculation. There can be a huge amount of math. Writing software to take advantage of a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for general purpose computing is non-trivial. We know how to do it. AMD engineers wrote OpenCL kernels, and contributed them to the open source code base. Turning on the OpenCL option to enable GPU Compute resulted in a 500X+ speedup, about ¼ second vs. 2minutes, 21 seconds.

Submission + - Nanostructured Glass Can Switch Between Blocking Heat and Blocking Light (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Electrochromic glass essentially uses electric charge to switch a window from allowing sunlight in to blocking it out. Some have estimated that such "smart windows" could cut lighting needs by about 20 percent and the cooling load by 25 percent at peak times.

Now researchers at the University of Texas Austin have found a way to make them even better. They developed a novel nanostructure architecture for electrochromic materials that enables a highly selective cool mode and warm mode-something thought to be impossible a few years back.

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