Submission + - Cops Can Force Suspect To Unlock Phone With Thumbprint, US Court Rules (arstechnica.com)
A three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit ruled unanimously against Payne, affirming a US District Court's denial of Payne's motion to suppress evidence. Payne was a California parolee who was arrested by California Highway Patrol (CHP) after a 2021 traffic stop and charged with possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, fluorofentanyl, and cocaine. There was a dispute in District Court over whether a CHP officer "forcibly used Payne's thumb to unlock the phone." But for the purposes of Payne's appeal, the government "accepted the defendant's version of the facts, i.e., 'that defendant's thumbprint was compelled.'"
Payne's Fifth Amendment claim "rests entirely on whether the use of his thumb implicitly related certain facts to officers such that he can avail himself of the privilege against self-incrimination," the ruling said. Judges rejected his claim, holding "that the compelled use of Payne's thumb to unlock his phone (which he had already identified for the officers) required no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking." "When Officer Coddington used Payne's thumb to unlock his phone—which he could have accomplished even if Payne had been unconscious—he did not intrude on the contents of Payne's mind," the court also said.
Submission + - Northrop Grumman working with Musk's SpaceX on U.S. spy satellite system (reuters.com)
The program, details of which were first reported by Reuters last month, is meant to enhance the U.S. government's ability to track military and intelligence targets from low-Earth orbits, providing high-resolution imagery of a kind that had traditionally been captured mostly by drones and reconnaissance aircraft.
The inclusion of Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), opens new tab, which has not been previously reported, reflects a desire among government officials to avoid putting too much control of a highly-sensitive intelligence program in the hands of one contractor, four people familiar with the project told Reuters. "It is in the government's interest to not be totally invested in one company run by one person," one of the people said.
It's unclear whether other contractors are involved at present or could join the project as it develops. Spokespeople at Northrop Grumman and SpaceX didn't respond to requests for comment.
Northrop Grumman is providing sensors for some of the SpaceX satellites, the people familiar with the project told Reuters. Northrop Grumman, two of the people added, will test those satellites at its own facilities before they are launched.A t least 50 of the SpaceX satellites are expected at Northrop Grumman facilities for procedures including testing and the installation of sensors in coming years, one of the people said.
In March, Reuters reported that the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, in 2021 awarded a $1.8 billion contract to SpaceX for the classified project, a planned network of hundreds of satellites. So far, the people familiar with the project said, SpaceX has launched roughly a dozen prototypes and is already providing test imagery to the NRO, an intelligence agency that oversees development of U.S. spy satellites.
Submission + - Light-pole installation blamed for 3-state 911 outage (cnn.com)
The outage of 911 systems in [Nevada, South Dakota, and Nebraska] Wednesday [April 18] evening was caused by the installation of a light pole, according to Lumen, a company that supports some of those systems.
The article goes on to say:
Molzen declined to elaborate on exactly how the light pole installation resulted in the 911 outage, or where the pole was located. The 911 director in Douglas County, Nebraska, which encompasses Omaha, said in a statement Lumen informed the county the outage was related to a “fiber cut.”
My questions is: If a city/locality contracts out its 911 system, shouldn't it have a reliable backup in place?
The outage in Del Rio, Texas at about the same time is not related.
Submission + - Dual standards at YouTube expose viewers to scams
However, this standard is almost never applied to advertisers, as witnessed by
this video which has also been running as a pre-roll/mid-roll ad recently and falsely offers access to Netflix, PrimeTV, Disney+ and Hulu without any monthly subscription.
Both the ad and the video that is played during the ad have been reported to @teamyoutube on X and via the report functions on the website but it continues to run and it will likely continue to do so until the advertiser has spent their budget.
This kind of hypocrisy does not endear the platform to its "partners" and also leaves happless users vulnerable to scams such as this.
The official response from @teamyoutube is simply that they investigate all reports — yet this is just the latest in a long list of ads for scam products such as free energy generators, drones that claim premium features but turn out to be toys and other products that are nothing like those being advertised.
Submission + - House Passes Bill Requiring Warrant To Purchase Data From Third Parties (thehill.com)
“In practice, these standards make it impossible for the [intelligence community], law enforcement to acquire a whole host of readily available information that they currently rely on,” an administration official said. “Covered customer records as defined in the bill is very broad and includes records pertaining to any U.S. person or indeed any foreigner inside the United States. And as a practical matter, there’s often no way to establish whether a particular individual was in the U.S. at a particular time a piece of data was created. Unless you did one thing, which is paradoxically to intrude further into their privacy just to figure out whether you could obtain some data.” “It can be impossible to know what’s in a data set before one actually obtains a data set,” the official continued. “So you’d be barred from getting that which you don’t even know.”
Submission + - Section 702 reauthorization bill (RISAA) (eff.org)
https://www.zwillgen.com/law-e...
Submission + - Russian military hackers claim credit for sabotaging US water utilities (wired.com)
Submission + - EU: Meta cannot rely on "Pay or Okay" (noyb.eu)
Submission + - Post Office chief exonerated of all misconduct claims (independent.co.uk)
In a statement, the Post Office said: “Over the last few months an independent barrister has been investigating a Speak Up complaint into various allegations, which included a number of misconduct allegations against our CEO, Nick Read.
“Following several interviews and examination of documents by the barrister, Nick has been exonerated of all the misconduct allegations and has the full and united backing of the Board to continue to lead the business.
“The Board regards the Speak Up process as critical to the open and supportive culture it wants to encourage at the Post Office.
“The integrity of that Speak Up process relies on confidentiality for whistleblowers and therefore we will not be providing further detail on this or any other Speak Up investigation.
“It is unacceptable that this specific process was referred to in the public domain but notwithstanding that, Post Office wants to make clear that Speak Up allegations will always be thoroughly and consistently investigated, whoever they are aimed at.”
Submission + - Top Astronomers Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About The Universe (futurism.com)
A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe’s growth in significant ways.
Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is “lopsided” after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.
The team found that one hemisphere actually hosted slightly more of these quasars, suggesting one area of the night sky was more massive than the other, undermining our conception of dark energy, a hypothetical form of energy used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.
“It would mean that two-thirds of the universe has just disappeared,” Sarkar told The Guardian.
Other researchers have suggested that the cosmological constant, which has been used for decades as a way to denote the rate of the universe’s expansion, actually varies across space, which would contradict the standard model of physics.