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Submission + - Snowden Document: CSEC spying on Canadians

Submitted by Walking The Walk
Walking The Walk writes: It seems the NSA isn't the only agency doing illegal domestic spying. According to a Snowden document obtained by the CBC, Canada's Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has apparently been tracking domestic travellers, starting from when they first use free wifi at an airport, and continuing for days after they left the terminal. From the article:

The document indicates the passenger tracking operation was a trial run of a powerful new software program CSEC was developing with help from its U.S. counterpart, the National Security Agency. In the document, CSEC called the new technologies "game-changing," and said they could be used for tracking "any target that makes occasional forays into other cities/regions."

The CBC notes early in the article that the spy agency:

is supposed to be collecting primarily foreign intelligence by intercepting overseas phone and internet traffic, and is prohibited by law from targeting Canadians or anyone in Canada without a judicial warrant.

Predictably, CSEC's chief is quoted saying that they aren't allowed to spy on Canadians, so therefore they don't. As observed by experts consulted for the story, that claim is equivalent to saying that they collect the data but we're to trust that they don't look at it.

Submission + - NSA spied on Copenhagen climate summit .. (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Developing countries have reacted angrily to revelations that the United States spied on other governments at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored communication between key countries before and during the conference to give their negotiators advance information about other positions at the high-profile meeting where world leaders including Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel failed to agree to a strong deal on climate change.

Submission + - Half of U.S. nuclear missile wing implicated in cheating (reuters.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Just over half of the 183 nuclear missile launch officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana have been implicated in a widening exam cheating scandal, the Air Force said on Thursday, acknowledging it had "systemic" problem within its ranks.

The cheating was discovered during an investigation into illegal drug possession among airmen, when test answers were found in a text message on one missile launch officer's cell phone. The Air Force initially said 34 officers either knew about the cheating or cheated themselves.

But Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday that the total number of implicated officers had grown to 92, all of them at Malmstrom, one of three nuclear missile wings overseeing America's 450 inter-continental missiles, or ICBMs.

Submission + - Sniffmap : 80% of the Internet is captured by NSA and allies

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sniffmap is a project to map the potential Internet mass interception performed by NSA and its allies. As stated in the fateful NSA document, many telecommunication links go through USA and its allies to connect to other countries. To create the dataset, it was detected each time an internet route between two IP addresses passes by an NSA controlled country and therefore can be considered as intercepted. Around 80% of the Internet is captured by NSA and allies.

Comment Fascinating! (Score -1, Troll) 19

by grub (#46112077) Attached to: First Global Map Outside the Solar System

The picture looks like 3 giant testicles. Do other distant brown dwarfs have the same 3 testicle look to them? Do creatures on other planets have 3 testicles, if they do indeed have testicles?

If other planetary life forms were divided in to two sexes, would one have 3 ovaries to compliment the others 3 testicles?

Testicles.

Submission + - Google's Motorola Adventure: Stinging Defeat, or Semi-Victory? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Google had previously sold Motorola’s Home division for $2.4 billion. Combine that with yesterday’s $2.91 billion sale of Motorola’s remaining assets, subtract the $12.5 billion acquisition price for the company back in 2011, and Google’s little smartphone adventure cost it roughly $7.1 billion even before you start throwing in expenses related to actual production, marketing, and personnel. That’s a hefty chunk of change, but some analysts think the deal was ultimately a good one because it allowed Google to pick up patents, engineering talent, and insight into the mobile-device marketplace. It's debatable, however, whether those patents ultimately helped Android in the still-raging smartphone wars, and Google was slow to promote Motorola smartphones out of fear of irritating other Android manufacturers. At least Google can console itself with the thought that so many of its other acquisitions—including YouTube and DoubleClick—resulted in massive profits; but you can’t hit a home run every time you step up to bat.

Submission + - It's Not Memory Loss - Older Minds May Just Be Fuller of Information

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Benedict Carey writes in the NYT that the idea that the brain slows with age is one of the strongest in all of psychology but a new paper suggests that older adults'; performance on cognitive tests reflects the predictable consequences of learning on information-processing, and not cognitive decline. A team of linguistic researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany used advanced learning models to search enormous databases of words and phrases. Since educated older people generally know more words than younger people, simply by virtue of having been around longer, the experiment simulates what an older brain has to do to retrieve a word. When the researchers incorporated that difference into the models, the aging “deficits” largely disappeared. That is to say, the larger the library you have in your head, the longer it usually takes to find a particular word (or pair). “What shocked me, to be honest, is that for the first half of the time we were doing this project, I totally bought into the idea of age-related cognitive decline in healthy adults,” says lead author Michael Ramscar but the simulations “fit so well to human data that it slowly forced me to entertain this idea that I didn’t need to invoke decline at all.” The new report will very likely add to a growing skepticism about how steep age-related decline really is. Scientists who study thinking and memory often make a broad distinction between “fluid” and “crystallized” intelligence. The former includes short-term memory, like holding a phone number in mind, analytical reasoning, and the ability to tune out distractions, like ambient conversation. The latter is accumulated knowledge, vocabulary and expertise. “In essence, what Ramscar’s group is arguing is that an increase in crystallized intelligence can account for a decrease in fluid intelligence,” says Zach Hambrick, In the meantime the new digital-era challenge to “cognitive decline” can serve as a ready-made explanation for blank moments, whether senior or otherwise (PDF). "It’s not that you’re slow.," says Carey. "It’s that you know so much."

Submission + - Restore Net Neutrality petition (whitehouse.gov) 1

Submitted by TopSpin
TopSpin writes: A petition of the White House to "direct the FCC to Classify Internet Providers as 'Common Carriers'" and thereby enable FCC Net Neutrality rules to be created and enforced needs about 24,000 additional signatures to reach the threshold of 100,000. Should the goal be reached the Administration will issue an official statement on the matter. The petition deadline is February 14.

Submission + - T-Mobile Writes The Best Press Release You'll Ever See From A Phone Company (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Reverand Dave
Reverand Dave writes: At the beginning of January, AT&T directly began offering T-Mobile users $450 to switch. Apparently the company has realized that if it can't buy T-Mobile directly, it might as well just buy its customers. Now, most companies when targeted by a larger competitor in this manner might sort through a variety of responses, and I'm sure at some point, perhaps late at night under the influence of an extra alcoholic beverage or two, someone might suggest the following. But to actually go ahead with it... well... that's a bit bold. In short, T-Mobile flips the offer on its head, noting that since it only applies to T-Mobile users, AT&T users now have a "risk free" way to test out T-Mobile — and they throw in hilarious fake quotes from AT&T Mobility's CEO, Ralph de la Vega, mock the "death star" and a variety of other things you don't normally see in a telco press release — such as comparing de la Vega to Darth Vader.

Submission + - Antioxidants Could Increase Cancer Rates (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Many people take vitamins such as A, E, and C thinking that their antioxidant properties will ward off cancer. But some clinical trials have suggested that such antioxidants, which sop up DNA-damaging molecules called free radicals, have the opposite effect and raise cancer risk in certain people. Now, in a provocative study that raises unsettling questions about the widespread use of vitamin supplements, Swedish researchers have showed that moderate doses of two widely used antioxidants spur the growth of early lung tumors in mice.

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