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Submission + - San Francisco Police Are Using Driverless Cars as Mobile Surveillance Cameras (vice.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while laden with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on around them in order to operate safely and analyze instances where they don't.

While the companies themselves, such as Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise, tout the potential transportation benefits their services may one day offer, they don’t publicize another use case, one that is far less hypothetical: Mobile surveillance cameras for police departments.

“Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads,” says a San Francisco Police department training document obtained by Motherboard via a public records request. “Investigations has already done this several times.”

Submission + - Fidelity will allow investors access to Bitcoin in their 401(k)s (fortune.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: In a first-of-its-kind move—and the latest sign that crypto-investing has gone mainstream—Fidelity Investments announced Tuesday that 401(k) plan participants will soon be able to invest in Bitcoin via their retirement plan.

The investing option should be available by mid-year, Fidelity, the nation’s largest 401(k) plan provider, said in a press release. Employers will need to opt into the change, which may limit which employees actually have access to Bitcoin in their workplace retirement accounts.

There are few details currently available about how exactly the account will work, but Fidelity says employees will be able to invest in Bitcoin via what the company is calling the Digital Assets Account, which will be part of the investor's 401(k). That account will also hold short-term money market investments to provide the liquidity for transactions.

Employers will be able to set their own limits on how much an employee can contribute to Bitcoin, though Fidelity's platform allows no more than 20% of a saver's contributions to be allocated to it, the company said. More digital assets may be added to the 401(k) offerings in the future.

Submission + - American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo'd Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA (arstechnica.com) 2

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: Anomaly Six, a secretive government contractor, claims to monitor the movements of billions of phones around the world and unmask spies with the press of a button.

In the months leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two obscure American startups met to discuss a potential surveillance partnership that would merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter. According to Brendon Clark of Anomaly Six — or “A6” — the combination of its cellphone location-tracking technology with the social media surveillance provided by Zignal Labs would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on Russian forces as they amassed along the Ukrainian border, or similarly track Chinese nuclear submarines. To prove that the technology worked, Clark pointed A6’s powers inward, spying on the National Security Agency and CIA, using their own cellphones against them.

Virginia-based Anomaly Six was founded in 2018 by two ex-military intelligence officers and maintains a public presence that is scant to the point of mysterious, its website disclosing nothing about what the firm actually does. But there’s a good chance that A6 knows an immense amount about you. The company is one of many that purchases vast reams of location data, tracking hundreds of millions of people around the world by exploiting a poorly understood fact: Countless common smartphone apps are constantly harvesting your location and relaying it to advertisers, typically without your knowledge or informed consent, relying on disclosures buried in the legalese of the sprawling terms of service that the companies involved count on you never reading. Once your location is beamed to an advertiser, there is currently no law in the United States prohibiting the further sale and resale of that information to firms like Anomaly Six, which are free to sell it to their private sector and governmental clientele. For anyone interested in tracking the daily lives of others, the digital advertising industry is taking care of the grunt work day in and day out — all a third party need do is buy access.

Submission + - NASA's Webb Space Telescope Achieves Near-Perfect Focus (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: After weeks of microscopic adjustments, NASA unveiled the first fully focused image from the James Webb Space Telescope Wednesday, a razor-sharp engineering photo of a nondescript star in a field of more distant galaxies that shows the observatory's optical system is working in near-flawless fashion.

The goal was to demonstrate Webb can now bring starlight to a near-perfect focus, proving the $10 billion telescope doesn't suffer from any subtle optical defects like the aberration that initially hobbled the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxies in the image were a bonus, whetting astronomers' appetites for discoveries to come.

"This is one of the most magnificent days in my whole career at NASA, frankly, and for many of us astronomers, one of the most important days that we've had," said NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen. "Today we can announce that the optics will perform to specifications or even better. It's an amazing achievement."

Submission + - China Finds Explanation For "Mystery Hut" Spotted On The Moon (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: It's a rock. A small rock.

China has discovered the explanation for the mysterious "hut" its Yutu 2 rover spotted on the moon late last year. As the lunar rover made a closer approach, a log of its activities revealed the object was actually just a rock on a crater rim.

The revelation came as the lunar rover drove closer to the formation that was once believed to be as tall as Paris' Arc de Triomphe, according to a post published Friday on "Our Space," a Chinese media channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration. Instead, it was much smaller and had a peculiar shape. Upon a closer view, the rock looked like a "jade rabbit" holding carrots, the post said.

"The Moon's surface is 38 million square kilometres of rocks, so it would have been astronomically exceptional for it to be anything else," Space News journalist Andrew Jones wrote on Twitter. "But while small, the jade rabbit/ rock will also be a monumental disappointment to some."

Submission + - Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship (theintercept.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Software used by the Department of Homeland Security to scan the records of millions of immigrants can automatically flag naturalized Americans to potentially have their citizenship revoked based on secret criteria, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept.

The software, known as ATLAS, takes information from immigrants’ case files and runs it though various federal databases. ATLAS looks for indicators that someone is dangerous or dishonest and is ostensibly designed to detect fraud among people who come into contact with the U.S. immigration system. But advocates for immigrants believe that the real purpose of the computer program is to create a pretext to strip people of citizenship. Whatever the motivation, ATLAS’s intended outcome is ultimately deportation, judging from the documents, which originate within DHS and were obtained by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Muslim Advocates through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

ATLAS helps DHS investigate immigrants’ personal relationships and backgrounds, examining biometric information like fingerprints and, in certain circumstances, considering an immigrant’s race, ethnicity, and national origin. It draws information from a variety of unknown sources, plus two that have been criticized as being poorly managed: the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the terrorist watchlist, and the National Crime Information Center. Powered by servers at tech giant Amazon, the system in 2019 alone conducted 16.5 million screenings and flagged more than 120,000 cases of potential fraud or threats to national security and public safety.

Ultimately, humans at DHS are involved in determining how to handle immigrants flagged by ATLAS. But the software threatens to amplify the harm caused by bureaucratic mistakes within the immigration system, mistakes that already drive many denaturalization and deportation cases. “ATLAS should be considered as suspect until it is shown not to generate unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory results,” said Laura Bingham, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative. “From what we are able to scrutinize in terms of the end results — like the disparate impact of denaturalization based on national origin — there is ample reason to consider ATLAS a threat to naturalized citizens.”

Submission + - How Data Brokers Sell Access to the Backbone of the Internet (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ISPs are quietly distributing "netflow" data that can, among other things, trace traffic through VPNs.

There's something of an open secret in the cybersecurity world: internet service providers quietly give away detailed information about which computer is communicating with another to private businesses, which then sells access to that data to a range of third parties, according to multiple sources in the threat intelligence industry.

The information, known as netflow data, is a useful tool for digital investigators. They can use it to identify servers being used by hackers, or to follow data as it is stolen. But the sale of this information still makes some people nervous because they are concerned about whose hands it may fall into.

"I'm concerned that netflow data being offered for commercial purposes is a path to a dark fucking place," one source familiar with the data told Motherboard. Motherboard granted multiple sources anonymity to speak more candidly about industry issues.

Submission + - We Built a CSAM System Like Apple's - The Tech Is Dangerous (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, Apple unveiled a system that would scan iPhone and iPad photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The announcement sparked a civil liberties firestorm, and Apple’s own employees have been expressing alarm. The company insists reservations about the system are rooted in “misunderstandings.” We disagree.

We wrote the only peer-reviewed publication on how to build a system like Apple’s — and we concluded the technology was dangerous. We’re not concerned because we misunderstand how Apple’s system works. The problem is, we understand exactly how it works.

Our research project began two years ago, as an experimental system to identify CSAM in end-to-end-encrypted online services. As security researchers, we know the value of end-to-end encryption, which protects data from third-party access. But we’re also horrified that CSAM is proliferating on encrypted platforms. And we worry online services are reluctant to use encryption without additional tools to combat CSAM.

We sought to explore a possible middle ground, where online services could identify harmful content while otherwise preserving end-to-end encryption. The concept was straightforward: If someone shared material that matched a database of known harmful content, the service would be alerted. If a person shared innocent content, the service would learn nothing. People couldn’t read the database or learn whether content matched, since that information could reveal law enforcement methods and help criminals evade detection.

But we encountered a glaring problem.

Our system could be easily repurposed for surveillance and censorship. The design wasn’t restricted to a specific category of content; a service could simply swap in any content-matching database, and the person using that service would be none the wiser.

Submission + - Apple's NeuralHash Algorithm Has Been Reverse-Engineered (schneier.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple’s NeuralHash algorithm — the one it’s using for client-side scanning on the iPhone — has been reverse-engineered.

Turns out it was already in iOS 14.3, and someone noticed:

        Early tests show that it can tolerate image resizing and compression, but not cropping or rotations.

We also have the first collision: two images that hash to the same value.

The next step is to generate innocuous images that NeuralHash classifies as prohibited content.

This was a bad idea from the start, and Apple never seemed to consider the adversarial context of the system as a whole, and not just the cryptography.

Submission + - GM Tells Bolt Owners to Park Outside Due to Fire Risk (cbsnews.com) 1

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: General Motors tells Chevy Bolt owners to park outside because batteries could catch fire

General Motors is telling owners of some older Chevrolet Bolts to park them outdoors and not to charge them overnight because two of the electric cars caught fire after recall repairs were made.

The company said Wednesday that the request covers 2017 through 2019 Bolts that were part of a group that was recalled earlier due to fires in the batteries.

The latest request comes after two Bolts that had gotten recall repairs caught fire, one in Vermont and the other in New Jersey, GM spokesman Kevin Kelly said.

Owners should take the steps "out of an abundance of caution," he said. The steps should be continued until GM engineers investigate and develop a repair, he said.

The cars should be parked outdoors after charging is complete, GM said in a statement. "We are moving as quickly as we can to investigate this issue," the company said.

Submission + - Ransomware Payments May Be Tax-Deductable (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: As ransomware attacks surge, the FBI is doubling down on its guidance to affected businesses: Don't pay the cybercriminals. But the U.S. government also offers a little-noticed incentive for those who do pay: If you pay a ransom, it may be tax deductible.

The Internal Revenue Sservice offers no formal guidance on ransomware payments, but multiple tax experts interviewed by the Associated Press said deductions of ransomeware payments as a cost of doing business are usually allowed under law and established guidance. Some called it a "silver lining" for ransomware victims.

Those looking to discourage payments are less sanguine. They fear the IRS deduction is a potentially problematic incentive that could entice businesses to pay ransoms against the advice of law enforcement. At a minimum, they say, the deductibility sends a discordant message to businesses under duress.

Submission + - Facebook Accounts for Over Half of Sex Trafficing Recruitment (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The majority of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases in the U.S. last year took place on Facebook, according to the Human Trafficking Institute's 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report.

"The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites," Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros said on CBSN Wednesday. "Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases."

In 2020 in the U.S., 59% of online recruitment of identified victims in active cases took place on Facebook alone. The report also states that 65% of identified child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited through Facebook.

The tech giant responded to the report's findings in a statement to CBS News: "Sex trafficking and child exploitation are abhorrent and we don't allow them on Facebook. We have policies and technology to prevent these types of abuses and take down any content that violates our rules."

Submission + - Amazon Managers Say They 'Hire to Fire' to Meet Annual Turnover Goals (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: Amazon has a goal to get rid of a certain percentage of employees every year, and three managers told Insider they felt so much pressure to meet the goal that they hired people to fire them.

"We might hire people that we know we're going to fire, just to protect the rest of the team," one manager told Insider.

The practice is informally called "hire to fire," in which managers hire people, internally or externally, they intend to fire within a year, just to help meet their annual turnover target, called unregretted attrition (URA). A manager's URA target is the percentage of employees the company wouldn't regret seeing leave, one way or the other.

Submission + - China launches ambitious mission to land on moon and return samples to Earth (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: China launched its most ambitious moon mission yet Monday: a robotic spacecraft expected to land on the lunar surface by the end of the week. The spacecraft is expected to collect about four pounds of rock and soil samples, and return them to Earth next month for laboratory analysis.

If successful, the Chang'e 5 mission will make China only the third nation, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to bring moon rocks back to Earth. It will also be the first to attempt the feat since Russia's Luna 24 in 1976.

The 8,335-pound Chang'e 5 spacecraft, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, is made up of four major components: a lunar orbiter, a sample return craft, a lander carrying science instruments and sample collection equipment, and a small ascent vehicle mounted atop the lander to carry the collected surface samples back up to orbit.

The Chang'e 5 lander features multiple cameras, a spectrometer to assess the composition of the soil near the spacecraft and a ground-penetrating radar. A robot arm is equipped with a percussive drill and scoop to pick up excavated rock and soil.

Working by remote control from Earth, engineers will use the arm to move collected samples up to the ascent vehicle, which then will blast off, rendezvous with the Chang'e 5 orbiter and transfer the sample to the return craft for the trip back to Earth.

Landing in Inner Mongolia is expected around December 16. From there, the samples will be transferred to specially equipped laboratories for analysis.

Submission + - What Happens After The Lockdown (medium.com) 2

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: Recently there has been a proliferation of modeling work which has been used to make the point that if we can stay inside, practice extreme social distancing, and generally lock-down nonessential parts of society for several months, then many deaths from COVID-19 can be prevented.

But what happens after the lockdown?

In the article studying the possible effects of heterogeneous measures, adademics presented examples of epidemic trajectories for COVID-19 assuming no mitigations at all, or assuming extreme mitigations which are gradually lifted at 6 months, to resume normal levels at 1 year.

Unfortunately, extreme mitigation efforts which end (even gradually) reduce the number of deaths only by 1% or so; as the mitigation efforts let up, we still see a full-scale epidemic, since almost none of the population has developed immunity to the virus.

There is a simple truth behind the problems with these modeling conclusions. The duration of containment efforts does not matter, if transmission rates return to normal when they end, and mortality rates have not improved. This is simply because as long as a large majority of the population remains uninfected, lifting containment measures will lead to an epidemic almost as large as would happen without having mitigations in place at all.

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