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Submission + - XKeyscore: NSA Tool Collects 'Nearly Everything A User Does On The Internet' (theguardian.com)

dryriver writes: A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats, social media activities and the internet browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

Comment Pfft. That's too much! (Score 3, Interesting) 195

I live in Vilnius, Lithuania (neighboring Latvia, for those who can't be bothered to look at the map) and pay 22 USD/month for 100 Mbps FTTH, no download caps. For additional 15 USD or so I can get cable TV with HD channels from the same provider.

But who the hell needs cable when torrents download at 70 Mbps or so? :)

Comment Re:Worried about the results of your actions? (Score 1) 730

Outsourcing to IBM has lead to a 30 to 60 day lead time.

I work for a major global outsourcing company (90K+ employees) and I sometimes wonder how do our clients put up with this. For example, a simple project (replacing one Wintel FTP server with another) is now taking more than 6 months to execute, and we are buying a complete server where a VMWare instance would be more than sufficient - load on that server is negligible. Entire project is costing maybe 30K $ just in time booked to the client - and that is something I could do in two days - but everybody takes it as "business as usual", including the client.

Makes me wanna go and start my own company, providing better quality services for 1/10th of a price. But then again, I wouldn't be able to claim that I've been in a market for 50 years and will not go bankrupt next year, crisis or no crisis.

Image

Lawyer Jailed For Contempt Is Freed After 14 Years 408

H. Beatty Chadwick has been in a staring match with the judicial system for the past 14 years, and the system just blinked. Chadwick was ordered to pay his ex-wife $2.5 million after their divorce. He refused to pay saying that he couldn't because he lost the money in a series of "bad investments." The judge in the case didn't believe him and sent him to jail for contempt. That was 14 years ago. Last week another judge let Chadwick go saying that "continued imprisonment would be legal only if there was some likelihood that ultimately he would comply with the order; otherwise, the confinement would be merely punitive instead of coercive." Chadwick, now 73, is believed to have served the longest contempt sentence in US history.
Sci-Fi

Sarah Connor Chronicles — Why It Died 834

brumgrunt writes "Sarah Connor was a non-populist, meditative, complex piece of television on a smash-bang, show-me-the-ratings kind of network. The two were never going to get on. Plus: how the Terminator name proved more hindrance than aid."
Security

Submission + - Obama could soon be able to shut down the internet (worldnetdaily.com) 2

Michael writes: "A pair of bills introduced in the U.S. Senate (773 & 778) by Senator Jay Rockefeller would grant the White House sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate the cybersecurity industry and even shut down Internet traffic during a declared "cyber emergency. A working draft of the legislation obtained by an Internet privacy group also spells out plans to grant the Secretary of Commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation's infrastructure "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access.""
The Courts

Submission + - Prof. Yongdae Kim to Testify in Capitol v. Thomas (blogspot.com) 1

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "With little help from her friends, this time around Jammie Thomas will have an expert witness of her own to help rebut the testimony of the RIAA's expert, Dr. Doug Jacobson, who testified for the RIAA (PDF) at the 2007 trial resulting in a $220,000 verdict over 24 song files having a retail market value of $23.76. The soundness of Jacobson's techniques and theories have been thoroughly vetted here on Slashdot, as well as on Groklaw. With a $3000 grant in hand from the Expert Witness Defense Fund maintained by the Free Software Foundation for just such a situation, Ms. Thomas had requested an extension of the discovery deadline to enable her to designate Assistant Professor Yongdae Kim to testify as an expert about techniques of group and internet security, including the means by which an internet protocol address can be "hijacked," or impersonated, by others who are not the owner of that address. The RIAA strenuously opposed the motion, not wanting to allow Ms. Thomas to have her own expert. In a 9-page decision (PDF), after a telephonic conference with the lawyers, the Magistrate Judge has granted Ms. Thomas's motion."
Windows

Post-Beta Windows 7 Build Leaked With New IE8 332

CWmike writes "A post-beta version of Windows 7, Build 7022, leaked to Internet file-sharing sites also includes an updated version of IE8, according to searches at several BitTorrent trackers. With Microsoft halting new Windows 7 beta downloads on Tuesday, and blocking all downloads as of noon (EST) today, users are again turning to illegal sources to get the new operating system."
The Almighty Buck

Microsoft Slaps $250K Bounty On Conficker Worm 258

alphadogg writes "The spreading Conficker/Downadup worm is now viewed as such a significant threat that it's inspired the formation of a posse to stop it, with Microsoft leading the charge by offering a $250,000 reward to bring the Conficker malware bad guys to justice. The money will be paid for 'information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet,' Microsoft said today in a statement, adding it is fostering a partnership with Internet registries and DNA providers such as ICANN, ORG, and NeuStar as well as security vendors Symantec and Arbor Networks, among others, to stop the Conficker worm once and for all. Conficker, also called Downadup, is estimated to have infected at least 10 million PCs. It has been slowly but surely spreading since November. Its main trick is to disable anti-malware protection and block access to anti-malware vendors' Web sites."
Networking

SoHo NAS With Good Network Throughput? 517

An anonymous reader writes "I work at a small business where we need to move around large datasets regularly (move onto test machine, test, move onto NAS for storage, move back to test machine, lather-rinse-repeat). The network is mostly OS X and Linux with one Windows machine (for compatibility testing). The size of our datasets is typically in the multiple GB, so network speed is as important as storage size. I'm looking for a preferably off-the shelf solution that can handle a significant portion of a GigE; maxing out at 6MB is useless. I've been looking at SoHo NAS's that support RAID such as Drobo, NetGear (formerly Infrant), and BuffaloTech (who unfortunately doesn't even list whether they support OS X). They all claim they come with a GigE interface, but what sort of network throughput can they really sustain? Most of the numbers I can find on the websites only talk about drive throughput, not network, so I'm hoping some of you with real-world experience can shed some light here."

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