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Submission + - Police use WhatsApp for surveillance operations, share intel with civilian.

TheP4st writes: A group of Swedish police officers thought it a good idea to use WhatsApp as a work tool for surveillance operations, the officer that set up their chat group mistyped one of the phone numbers to mistakenly include a civilian IT teacher. Once the teacher informed authorities about the mistake it took more than 24 hours before he stopped receiving sensitive case information that included criminal records excerpts, passport photos and communications between surveillance teams tailing suspects.

When confronted by Computer Sweden (article in Swedish) the officer responsible for setting up the group say "I know this server is not located in Sweden and that one cannot share every kind of information" Yet it took less than an hour from that the group were set up that the teacher started getting sensitive intel on suspects. The only mobile chat medium approved for sensitive information is Blackberry, and this initiative by a small group of officers happened as they do not have access to Blackberry handsets which are considered too expensive.

Article in English

Submission + - Pennsylvania High School Distributes 1,700 Ubuntu Laptops to Students

An anonymous reader writes: A Pennsylvania high school has distributed 1,700 Ubuntu Linux based Laptops to their students. The laptops will be used in the classroom and at home Students are given full control of their laptops. They are permitted to install programs and experiment with open source software. The school selected open source Linux over Apple OSX & MS-Windows and saved at least $360,000 on licensing fees alone. However, "Many parents think open source is some nefarious plot; they misunderstand that free in principle isn't a sub plot to take over their computer,” said Andrew Lobos, one of four seniors at Penn Manor High who has spent the last several summers interning with the IT team.

Submission + - Swedish programmer hacks iPhone (techworld.idg.se)

An anonymous reader writes: A few days ago [Swedish news outlet idg.se] were contacted by the Swedish programmer Roman Digerberg who told us he had found serious security holes in IOS. Among other things, he asserted that it was possible to send an anonymous text message that appears on the lock screen, even if the phone is set to not display messages that way.

Submission + - Swedish police used WhatsApp during stakeout (google.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Swedish police used the chat service Whatsapp to communicate during a stakeout. But when they entered the wrong mobile number in the mailing list, sensitive intelligence information ended up in an civilian individual's cell phone.
"Blackberry mobiles are the only ones approved for sensitive communications. But we have not been able to use them because they costs too much money", the policeman says.

Submission + - 12 year old develops a Braille Printer from Lego (kinja.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Developed by Shubham Banerjee, a 7th grade student from Santa Clara, California. BRAIGO is a Braille Printer using Lego Mindstorms EV3. This concept slashes the price of a printer from more than $2000 to $350. Thus giving a more cost effective printer for the disadvantaged. Additionally he plans to give the design and code for free download.
ref: http://www.indiawest.com/news/...
ref: http://sociotechnocrat.kinja.c...

Submission + - Hackers sweep up FTP credentials for the New York Times, UNICEF and others (computerworld.com)

SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes: The researcher who discovered the Target and Adobe data breaches has another find: a 7,000-strong list of FTP sites run by a variety of companies, complete with login credentials. The hackers have uploaded malicious PHP scripts in some cases, perhaps as a launch pad for further attacks. The passwords for the FTP applications are complex and not default ones, indicating the hackers may have other malware installed on people's systems in those organizations.

Submission + - Israel Unveils World's First Operational Laser Weapon

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Abraham Rabinovich reports at the Washington Free Beacon that Israel has unveiled a laser defense system that it says will be able to shoot down rockets and artillery shells with a high-energy beam. The system, known as Iron Beam, has already been tested successfully and will be fully operational and deployed next year. American funding was involved in development of the system. One problem has been to miniaturize the system and make it easily transportable but Iron Beam can be mounted on a single truck operating with another truck carrying radar equipment. "So difficult has the technology proven to harness that many in the military and defense industries wrote off lasers as impractical," says Rabinovich. "However, both countries have continued working on weaponizing lasers and have apparently made significant advances." Iron Beam is designed to deal with short-range threats such as rockets, mortar and artillery shells, and drones coming from Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Its maximal interception range is 4.5 miles, too short a distance for other systems to be effective and Israel considers the weapon vital to the security of towns and kibbutz settlements along the border that lie within that range. The system is designed to deal with threats that fly on too small a trajectory to be engaged efficiently by Iron Dome, the missile defense shield credited with an 80 percent success rate against rockets fired by Palestinian militants. Both shields are manufactured by state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. While Iron Dome launches radar-guided interceptor rockets, Iron Beam's laser will super-heat the warheads of shells with ranges of up to 7 km (4.5 miles). Noting that Israel will deploy laser weapons invokes a little bit of nostalgia from the 1980s when President Reagan proposed a missile defense system based, at least in part, on beam weapons. The end of the Cold War put an end to space based beam weapons, though a slightly less ambitious missile defense system is under construction and lasers are still being contemplated for the battle field and on navy ships.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 1475

I'm not excusing anything. I'm advocating tolerance towards people with other beliefs. It's what we're discussing, right?

I suggest you try discussing the matter with some muslims. I can assure you that the absolute majority will disapprove of violence in most ways.

Implying that christianity hasn't "hurt a fly" is just ridiculous.

Most religions have a lot of blood in their tracks. I attribute most of that to intolerance, which in turn comes mostly from fear.

Prejudice tends to fuel fear and intolerance.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 1475

Now you're just being sad.

You know as well as I that the old testament contains lots of really ugly, violent and weird stuff. Does that mean that most christians agree with its contents? No. Exactly.

The same thing applies to most muslims. Try getting to know some, discuss with them and you'll soon realize that they're not that different from you.

Since this thread has gone sour, name calling and projections have taken over, let's put and end to it now.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 2, Interesting) 1475

I've been to a mosque, and I've listened to what's been said there. Have you?

You seem to be on a mission to propagate misconceptions about islam. Fact is that most muslims are like everyone else. They want to live their life in peace.

I agree that a lot of intolerance comes from religious teachings. In my view the dominant religions are often the worst, i.e. christianity here in the western world.
As long as we keep church and state well separated that shouldn't need to pose a big problem. The law should not be based on religious views.

As for your assumptions about me I can only tell you that you are wrong.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 1475

I consider hypothetical questions like that of little use. Anyone trying to harm me or my kids in a serious way would certainly not be tolerated to do so. I think most people would agree on that.

I have no problems at all with any of the muslim, ahteist or gay people that I know. They live their life without harming other people (to the extent that one can do that reasonably).

Again, it's about tolerating different views on life, even if you disagree wholeheartedly with some of those views.
If most people would do that, we would have a lot less problems in our society.

One of the biggest problems today is religious politicians trying to turn their own moral values into law, and by that limiting other peoples personal freedom.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 1475

For me, tolerance is about tolerating different beliefs, no matter how much I may disagree with them. It's about letting other people lead their lives as they wish. As long as they don't harm anyone else against their will.

It has nothing to do with sweeping generalisations of others.

Programming

Subversion 1.5.0 Released 104

Hyrum writes "The Subversion team is proud to announce the release of Subversion 1.5.0, a popular open source version control system. The first new feature release of Subversion in almost 2 years, 1.5.0 contains a number of new improvements and features. A detailed list of changes can be found in the release notes. Among the major new features included in this release is merge tracking—Subversion now keeps track of what changes have been merged where. Source code is available immediately, with various other packages available soon."

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