Submission + - Clearview AI Used Nearly 1 Million Times By US Police (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facial recognition firm Clearview has run nearly a million searches for US police, its founder has told the BBC CEO Hoan Ton-That also revealed Clearview now has 30bn images scraped from platforms such as Facebook, taken without users' permissions. [...] The company is banned from selling its services to most US companies, after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took Clearview AI to court in Illinois for breaking privacy law. But there is an exemption for police, and Mr Ton-That says his software is used by hundreds of police forces across the US.

Police in the US do not routinely reveal whether they use the software, and it is banned in several US cities including Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. The use of facial recognition by the police is often sold to the public as only being used for serious or violent crimes. In a rare interview with law enforcement about the effectiveness of Clearview, Miami Police said they used the software for every type of crime, from murders to shoplifting. Assistant Chief of Police Armando Aguilar said his team used the system about 450 times a year, and that it had helped solve several murders. However, critics say there are almost no laws around the use of facial recognition by police.

Submission + - In a First, Renewables Beat Coal In the US Power Sector In 2022 (electrek.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time ever, renewable power generation – that’s wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and geothermal – exceeded coal-fired generation in the US electric power sector in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Overall, the US electric power sector produced 4,090 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of power in 2022. Wind and solar’s combined total generation increased from 12% in 2021 to 14% in 2022. Hydropower stayed the same last year at 6%, and biomass and geothermal also remained unchanged, at less than 1%. So that’s a total of 21%. Utility-scale solar capacity in the US electric power sector – the EIA doesn’t include rooftop solar – increased from 61 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 71 GW in 2022, according to EIA data. Wind capacity grew from 133 GW in 2021 to 141 GW in 2022. Coal-fired generation, on the other hand, dropped from 23% in 2021 to 20% in 2022 because a number of coal-fired power plants retired, and the plants still online were used less.

Renewables surpassed nuclear generation for the first time in 2021, and that trend continued last year. Nuclear dropped from 20% in 2021 to 19% in 2022 because Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant was retired in May 2022. However, Palisades’ new owner, Holtec, wants to restart it, and this idea is not proving particularly popular, with one environmental group saying that would risk a “Chernobyl-scale catastrophe.” The Biden administration pledged $6 billion on March 2 to help extend the operating life of aging nuclear power plants in order to help the US combat climate change. However, natural gas is still the largest source of US electricity generation, and it grew from 37% in 2021 to 39% in 2022. This month, the EIA forecast that both wind and solar will each grow by 1% in 2023. Natural gas is forecast to remain unchanged, and coal is forecast to decline by 3% to 17% next year.

Submission + - US Military Needs 7th Branch Just For Cyber, Leaders Say (therecord.media)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A national association of current and former military digital security leaders is calling on Congress to establish a separate cyber service, arguing that the lack of one creates an “unnecessary risk” to U.S. national security. In a March 26 memorandum, the Military Cyber Professional Association urged lawmakers to establish a U.S. Cyber Force in this year’s annual defense policy bill.

“For over a decade, each service has taken their own approach to providing United States Cyber Command forces to employ and the predictable results remain inconsistent readiness and effectiveness,” according to the group, which boasts around 3,700 members. “Only a service, with all its trappings, can provide the level of focus needed to achieve optimal results in their given domain,” the memo states. “Cyberspace, being highly contested and increasingly so, is the only domain of conflict without an aligned service. How much longer will our citizenry endure this unnecessary risk?”

The creation of a Cyber Force would follow the arrival of the Space Force in 2019. It was the first new branch of the U.S. military in 72 years, bringing the total to six. The association’s missive is likely to spark fresh debate on Capitol Hill, where an increasing number of policymakers see a cyber-specific military service as an inevitability. [..] In its memo, the association says that while “steps should be taken to establish such a service, with urgency, pursuing it in a hasty manner would likely prove to be a source of great disruption and risk to our own forces and operations.” Therefore, any legislative approval of a Cyber Force should be accompanied by a “thorough study to determine what this military service should look like, how it be implemented, and the applicable timeline,” according to the group.

Submission + - Glass Beads On Moon's Surface May Hold Bills of Tons of Water, Scientists Say (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tiny glass beads strewn across the moon’s surface contain potentially billions of tons of water that could be extracted and used by astronauts on future lunar missions, researchers say. The discovery is thought to be one of the most important breakthroughs yet for space agencies that have set their sights on building bases on the moon, as it means there could be a highly accessible source of not only water but also hydrogen and oxygen. “This is one of the most exciting discoveries we’ve made,” said Mahesh Anand, a professor of planetary science and exploration at the Open University. “With this finding, the potential for exploring the moon in a sustainable manner is higher than it’s ever been.”

Anand and a team of Chinese scientists analyzed fine glass beads from lunar soil samples returned to Earth in December 2020 by the Chinese Chang’e-5 mission. The beads, which measure less than a millimeter across, form when meteoroids slam into the moon and send up showers of molten droplets. These then solidify and become mixed into the moon dust. Tests on the glass particles revealed that together they contain substantial quantities of water, amounting to between 300m and 270 billion tons across the entire moon’s surface. “This is going to open up new avenues which many of us have been thinking about,” said Anand. “If you can extract the water and concentrate it in significant quantities, it’s up to you how you utilize it.”

The latest research, published in Nature Geoscience, points to fine glass beads as the source of that surface water. Unlike frozen water lurking in permanently shaded craters, this should be far easier to extract by humans or robots working on the moon. “It’s not that you can shake the material and water starts dripping out, but there’s evidence that when the temperature of this material goes above 100C, it will start to come out and can be harvested,” Anand said. The water appears to form when high-energy particles streaming from the sun – the so-called solar wind – strike the molten droplets. The solar wind contains hydrogen nuclei, which combine with oxygen in the droplets to produce water or hydroxyl ions. The water then becomes locked in the beads, but it can be released by heating the material. Further tests on the material showed the water diffuses in and out of the beads on the timeframe of a few years, confirming an active water cycle on the moon. According to Prof Sen Hu, a senior co-author of the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, such impact glasses could store and release water on other airless rocks in the solar system.

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