You're confusing GPS with an odometer. GPS, unlike your odometer, doesn't measure your wheels' rotation, it measures your GPS unit's position in relation to satellites. Spinning your tires all day won't budge the GPS.

If I had a trackball it would have to be cordless, as the computer and TV (its monitor) are across the room.

Considering that (TFA didn't mention but GMA did) the readers themselves were what was compromised, a PIN wouldn't have helped at all.

The government *WANTS* to splash it.

Which government? Jesus, Dave, that was really stupid. You do know that the I in ISS stands for "international", don't you?

This wasn't about "exposing" the NSA -- anyone with half a brain realizes that the very definition of a spy agency is that it spies on people. "They were spying on americans!" Yeah, ok, and?

And it's fucking ILLEGAL, damn it. Have a look at this article written by J. Kirk Wiebe, a retired NSA executive:

But how can anyone believe that Snowden would not be deserving of amnesty? Clearly it is the government and its senior officials who committed the crime -- people who took oaths to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic and who failed to take to heart the words they swore to uphold. Indeed, Snowden did not -- nor does any government employee -- swear allegiance to the president of the United States, or even to the secretary of Defense or the director of NSA. No, he swore to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Unfortunately, while federal law protects whistleblowers who work in other government sectors from reprisals for truth-telling and have paths for reporting wrongdoing and mismanagement, those who work in intelligence are expressly denied such rights. When Senior Staff Representative Diane Roark and longtime senior NSA employees Bill Binney, Ed Loomis, and I submitted a formal complaint about mismanagement at the agency, the government's response on July 26, 2007, was to send the FBI to raid our homes, searching them for seven hours and seizing our computers, phones and other digital media. We are just now getting our property back after having successfully sued the government in December 2012.

The government even indicted Tom Drake, although it dropped its criminal charges in the case against him. Still, for the five of us, it was the equivalent of a punch in the face and a warning to other would-be "truth-tellers" not to report wrongful government activities or the government will come after you.

Snowden clearly saw what the government does to whistleblowers who try to work within government to fix things that are wrong. He knew that our complaint to the United States Department of Defense inspector general in September 2002 went for naught. Although the report agreed that our complaint was well-founded, nothing happened -- no one was found guilty of wrongful behavior or waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Even before writing the complaint, we -- all longtime and senior NSA employees -- along with Diane Roark, a senior staffer on the House Permanent Select Subcommittee on Intelligence, had approached Congress in 2001 about the matter of illegal collection of data about U.S. citizens. No action. Snowden might have known that we were ultimately punished by approaching officials, and even had our security clearances revoked when the FBI raided our homes -- despite the fact that four of the five of us were not indicted and none of us was found guilty of committing a crime.

For employees in the business of intelligence, there are no honest brokers, no viable paths to follow to report the subverting of the U.S. Constitution. It is the reason Snowden went first to Hong Kong and ultimately Moscow to seek refuge. He did not go to those places to give away national secrets, rather he needed a place to stay that was safe from extradition and where he could wait while the United States sorted through the facts, especially those regarding government leaders who violated the most basic of our nation's laws -- the right to privacy.

BTW, your sig is right on target this time -- you've pissed off fans of freedom and privacy.

Also written about by damned near every sci-fi writer there ever was. I'm wondering what someone who has never heard of it is doing at slashdot? Since he's AC he's probably a jocktroll. The lack of capitalization suggests he's a young jocktroll who wishes he was smart enough to be a nerd.

I certainly hope you saw a retina specialist, there may have been something he could have done to negate the harmful effects. Many welders go blind in their old age from unshielded glimpses of the arc welder (I knew one such fellow).

(By the way, "their" should have been "there").

The number of aliterates who are visiting slashdot these days astounds me. People who don't read on a nerd site? It's sad how many people here in the last five years or so can't handle homophones, use grocers' apostrophes, and think "lose" and "loose" are synonyms (if the word "synonym is even in their vocabulary).

As to the aliterate's comment, he was right -- just look at this comment. A humorous jab at Microsoft's most hated OS ever and he gets modded "troll". Nobody but a shill would downmod that comment, it should be +3 funny and the shill who modded him down should never get mod points again.

That's troll's getting a little old, son. Better quit now before you lose all your karma... if you have any left.

Hubble's mirror design changed to match the existing mirrors already deployed in spy satellites -- Aiming an army of Hubbles at earth? That's some awesome spying capability; No terrorists or enemies could make a significant move against us without us finding out immediately already thanks to space spying programs. And, when we launch more impressive satellites the old spy-sats can be donated to NASA and pointed into space, or sent to other planets. [space.com]

I think you have that backwards. The NSA gets the most advanced toys first, why do you thing they changed Hubble's design? Because the spy telescopes were more powerful.

That isn't what I logged in to say, though -- even though TFA was published yesterday, they must need some lead time because the Senate just voted for a budget, no more sequesters for two more years. My guess is the article was written and edited weeks ago.

There's a good point hidden in the above AC's trollish "joke"; inbreeding happens with almost all, if not all, species, especially when there is a small population of that species. That includes Neanderthals and modern humans, dogs, cats, bonobos...

This story brings to mind an old pop song by some one hit wonder I haven't heard in almost half a century --

I'm a neanderthal man
You're a Neanderthal girl
Lets make Neanderthal love
In this Neanderthal world

(IIRC it was that one verse repeated over and over, a really repetitious and stupid but catchy pop song)

Not connecting them to the internet wouldn't have helped. From what I heard on TV, the card readers themselves were physically compromised. It looks to me like a large criminal organization has infiltrated Target's employee ranks.

That statement is ridiculous. Christianity has been around a thousand times as long os BitCoin, do you really think BitCoin will be around 2000 years in the future?

A third of the world's population is Christian. What tiny fraction of a percent of the world's population uses BitCoin? I don't, and neither does a single pesron I know IRL.

If you point an IR light source, such as a remote control, at the camera from a few inches away it'll be visible DESPITE the IR filter. By analogy, dark sunglasses might filter out 80% of visible light, but that doesn't make the a flashlight invisible through sunglasses.

Every digital camera I've ever checked has an IR filter coating. Often, a cotton swab dipped in acetone can be used to wipe away the coating.

If you're thinking of the RNG thing, actually some banks did still have the logs which is why they were able to identify the problem in the first place. But yes not all banks are so careful.

Don't get me wrong. It's good that people research EMV, and the task isn't easy. I respect the Cambridge team for that reason. But when they talk to the media or about their work in general, they act as if friendly fraud doesn't exist and EMV is just one giant scam by banks. That's ridiculous. "Friendly fraud" (that's the technical term for it) where the consumer defrauds the bank/merchant is not only a thing, but a highly prevalent and measurable thing. EMV protects sellers by shifting payment security to the buyer, who is typically the one who can most affect it, by keeping their PIN safe. It's not OK that banks don't seem to be pen-testing their own systems aggressively enough, although of course as the system is closed we don't know about the mistakes their own development teams did catch. But it's not useless, and nor is the liability shift. After all, in commerce it takes two to tango.