Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Snowden Says His Mission Is Accomplished 5

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Edward Snowden met with reporters from the Washington Post for fourteen hours and in his first interview since June reflected at length about surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed. “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished. I already won,” says Snowden. ““All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.” Snowden says that the NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. But Snowden upended the agency on its own turf. “You recognize that you’re going in blind, that there’s no model,” says Snowden, acknowledging that he had no way to know whether the public would share his views. “But when you weigh that against the alternative, which is not to act, you realize that some analysis is better than no analysis. Because even if your analysis proves to be wrong, the marketplace of ideas will bear that out." Snowden succeeded because the NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever and says people who accuse him of disloyalty mistake his purpose. “I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.” Snowden also said he is confident he did not expose secret documents to Chinese intelligence in Hong Kong and he did not bring them to Russia. “There’s nothing on it,” Snowden said, turning his laptop screen toward his visitor. “My hard drive is completely blank.” Snowden says " there is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any country other than the United States." “If I defected at all,” says Snowden, “I defected from the government to the public.”

Submission + - Chinese spacecraft lands on moon

Submitted by niftydude
niftydude writes: A Chinese spacecraft has landed on the moon in the first "soft landing" since 1976.

The event, broadcast live on Chinese TV, means the country has joined the US and the former Soviet Union in managing to accomplish such a feat.

The Chang'e 3, named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit rover, which will dig and conduct geological surveys. The mission is expected to last three months.

Submission + - Newly Discovered Greenhouse Gas is 7,000 Times More Powerful Than CO2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Suzanne Goldenberg writes at The Guardian that researchers at the University of Toronto's department of chemistry have identified a newly discovered greenhouse gas, perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), in use by the electrical industry since the mid-20th century, that is 7,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth. "We claim that PFTBA has the highest radiative efficiency of any molecule detected in the atmosphere to date," says Angela Hong. Concentrations of PFTBA in the atmosphere are low – 0.18 parts per trillion in the Toronto area – compared to 400 parts per million for carbon dioxide but PFTBA is long-lived. There are no known processes that would destroy or remove PFTBA in the lower atmosphere so it has a very long lifetime, possibly hundreds of years, and is destroyed in the upper atmosphere. ""It is so much less than carbon dioxide, but the important thing is on a per molecule basis, it is very very effective in interacting with heat from the Earth." PFTBA has been in use since the mid-20th century for various applications in electrical equipment, such as transistors and capacitors. "PFTBA is just one example of an industrial chemical that is produced but there are no policies that control its production, use or emission," says Hong. "It is not being regulated by any type of climate policy."

Submission + - Bitcoin Thefts Surge, DDoS Hackers Take Millions (informationweek.com)

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: In November, Denmark-based Bitcoin Internet Payment System suffered a DDoS attack. Unfortunately for users of the company's free online wallets for storing bitcoins, the DDoS attack was merely a smokescreen for a digital heist that quickly drained numerous wallets, netting the attackers a reported 1,295 bitcoins — worth nearly $1 million — and leaving wallet users with little chance that they'd ever see their money again. Given the potential spoils from a successful online heist, related attacks are becoming more common. But not all bitcoin heists have been executed via hack attacks or malware. For example, a China-based bitcoin exchange called GBL launched in May. Almost 1,000 people used the service to deposit bitcoins worth about $4.1 million. But the exchange was revealed to be an elaborate scam after whoever launched the site shut it down on October 26 and absconded with the funds. The warnings are all the same: "Don't trust any online wallet.", "Find alternative storage solutions as soon as possible.", and "You don't have to keep your Bitcoins online with someone else. You can store your Bitcoins yourself, encrypted and offline."

Submission + - US Working to Kill UN Privacy Resolutions (foreignpolicy.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How do you protect your privacy these days? Or do you? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The NSA snoops traffic and has backdoors in encryption algorithms. Law enforcement agencies are operating surveillance drones domestically (not to mention traffic cameras and satellites). Commercial entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon have vast data on your internet behavior. The average Joe has sophisticated video-shooting and sharing technology in his pocket, meaning your image can be spread anywhere anytime. Your private health, financial, etc. data is protected by under-funded IT organizations which are not under your control. Is privacy even a valid consideration anymore, or is it simply obsolete? If you think you can maintain your privacy, how do you go about it?

Submission + - Users ID'ed through typing, mouse movements (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: Users can be identified with a half percent margin of error based on the way they type. The research work has been spun into an application that could continuously authenticate users, rather than just relying on passwords, and could lock accounts if another person jumped on the computer. Researchers are now integrating mouse movements and clicks, and mobile touch patterns into the work.

Submission + - Google is Flying High and Polluting the Air with Government-Bought Fuel (theblaze.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: While touting green technology, and lobbying the federal government on environmental policy, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt have put 3.4 million miles on their private jets in recent years, polluting the atmosphere with 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide. Their trips, according to flight log data, included single-day jaunts and brief corporate meetings, but also what appear to be hundreds of exotic vacation destinations.

Since 2007, the private airplane fleet owned by Google execs has been housed in a hangar at NASA’s Ames Research Center just outside Google’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. The taxpayer-funded hangars are intended for aircraft performing scientific research to assist NASA, but it appears that Google’s jets perform very little actual scientific research (unless calculating the circumference of Mai Tai umbrellas on the beaches of Babelthuap somehow qualifies).

In addition to the publicly subsidized hangar space, Google received another money saving perk courtesy of U.S. taxpayers: Millions of dollars’ worth of jet fuel at below-market prices from NASA and the Department of Defense. Google officials spent an estimated $29 million on jet fuel at the facility, roughly $10 million less than what they would have paid on the open market.

Submission + - Boston Cops Outraged Over Plans To Watch Their Movements Using GPS 3

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The Boston Globe reports that the pending use of GPS tracking devices, slated to be installed in Boston police cruisers, has many officers worried that commanders will monitor their every move. Boston police administrators say the system gives dispatchers the ability to see where officers are, rather than wait for a radio response and supervisors insist the system will improve their response to emergencies. Using GPS, they say, accelerates their response to a call for a shooting or an armed robbery. “We’ll be moving forward as quickly as possible,” says former police commissioner Edward F. Davis. “There are an enormous amount of benefits. . . . This is clearly an important enhancement and should lead to further reductions in crime.” But some officers said they worry that under such a system they will have to explain their every move and possibly compromise their ability to court street sources. “No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?” said one officer who spoke anonymously because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. “If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes? It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.” Meanwhile civil libertarians are relishing the rank and file's own backlash. "The irony of police objecting to GPS technology for privacy reasons is hard to miss in the aftermath of United States v. Jones," says Woodrow Hartzog. "But the officers’ concerns about privacy illustrate just how revealing GPS technology can be. Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior."

Submission + - 10 Reasons The Browser Is Becoming The Universal OS

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: Extensible, mutable, and rapidly evolving thanks to open source roots, the Web browser reigns as a platform for users and developers alike, making it as near a universal operating system as you can get, InfoWorld's Peter Wayner argues. 'Despite these very legitimate plaints from OS geniuses, the browser is the dominant layer, the one nexus for software, the one switchboard where all power lies. It needs from the operating system a rectangle to draw the Web page, a bit of storage space, and a TCP/IP feed. It does everything else in a cross-platform way that is, when all is considered, relatively free of bugs and other issues. ... Here are 10 reasons why the browser is now king.'

Submission + - Smithsonian Releasing 3D Models of Artifacts

Submitted by plover
plover writes: The Seattle Times reports "the Smithsonian Institution is launching a new 3D scanning and printing initiative to make more of its massive collection accessible to schools, researchers and the public worldwide. A small team has begun creating 3D models of some key objects representing the breadth of the collection at the world's largest museum complex. Some of the first 3D scans include the Wright brothers' first airplane, Amelia Earhart's flight suit, casts of President Abraham Lincoln's face during the Civil War and a Revolutionary War gunboat. Less familiar objects include a former slave's horn, a missionary's gun from the 1800s and a woolly mammoth fossil from the Ice Age. They are pieces of history some people may hear about but rarely see or touch."

So far they have posted 20 models on the site, with the promise of much more to come.

Submission + - Putin Beats Chuck Norris

Submitted by theshowmecanuck
theshowmecanuck writes: In a true news for nerds flash, Slashdot's favorite ass kicker Chuck Norris has just been eclipsed by Vladimir Putin in the realm of Taekwondo. It seems our man Vlad has just been granted a 9th degree black belt, one better than yesterday's news Chuck. The king is dead, long live the king. Now to start rewriting all those old Norris jokes. Let's see, Chuck Norris^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVladimir Putin is the only person that can punch a cyclops between the eye.

Slashdot Top Deals

Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout.

Close