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Submission + - Edward Snowden Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: Edward Snowden has a chance of getting the 2014 Nobel Peace Price, as two Norwegian members of the Parliament have nominated him – Baard Vegard Solhjell, a former environment minister and Snorre Valen. For those who don't know, the Nobel prize has been running since 1901 and is awarded annually in Oslo, Norway. So, the fact that members of the Norwegian Parliament have proposed him for the Nobel Peace Prize could improve his chance of winning. After all, if Obama got this prize, why wouldn't Snowden get it?

Submission + - Federal Court kills Net Neutrality, says FCC lacks authority. (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a report from Gizmodo, a US Appeals Court has invalidated the FCC's Net Neutrality rules. From the decision: "Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order."

Could this be the final nail in the coffin for Net Neutrality? Or will the FCC fight back? This submitter really, really hopes they fight back...

Submission + - NSA Broke Into Links Between Google, Yahoo Datacenters (washingtonpost.com) 2

Submitted by barlevg
barlevg writes: The Washington Post reports that, according to documents obtained from Edward Snowden, through their so-called "MUSCULAR" initiative, the National Security Agency has exploited a weakness in the transfers between data centers, which Google and others pay a premium to send over secure fiber optic cables. The leaked documents include a post-it note as part of an internal NSA Powerpoint presentation showing a diagram of Google network traffic, an arrow pointing to the Google front-end server with text reading, "SSL Added and Removed Here" with a smiley face. When shown the sketch by The Post and asked for comment, two engineers with close ties to Google responded with strings of profanity.

Submission + - Gmail down... again? (google.com) 1

Submitted by Landy DeField
Landy DeField writes: Tried accessing your Gmail today? You may be faced with "Temporary Error (500)" error message. Tried to get more detailed information by clicking on the "Show Detailed Technical Info" link which loads a single line... "Numeric Code: 5". Clicked on the App status dashboard link. All were green except for the Admin Control Panel / API. Took a glance 2 minutes ago and now, Google mail and Google Drive are orange and Admin Control Panel / API is red. Look forward to the actual ..."Detailed Technical Info" on what is going on.

Submission + - Intelligence effort named citizens, not terrorists (nctimes.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: A multibillion-dollar information-sharing program created in the aftermath of 9/11 has improperly collected information about innocent Americans and produced little valuable intelligence on terrorism, a Senate report concludes.

The lengthy, bipartisan report is a scathing evaluation of what the Department of Homeland Security has held up as a crown jewel of its security efforts. The report underscores a reality of post-9/11 Washington: National security programs tend to grow, never shrink, even when their money and manpower far surpass the actual subject of terrorism.

Because of a convoluted grants process set up by Congress, Homeland Security officials don't know how much they have spent in their decade-long effort to set up so-called fusion centers in every state. Government estimates range from less than $300 million to $1.4 billion in federal money, plus much more invested by state and local governments. Federal funding is pegged at about 20 percent to 30 percent. Despite that, Congress is unlikely to pull the plug. That's because, whether or not it stops terrorists, the program means politically important money for state and local governments.
Privacy

Submission + - House Passes CISPA (wired.com)

Submitted by wiedzmin
wiedzmin writes: The House approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act with a 248 to 168 vote today. CISPA allows internet service providers to share Internet "threat" information with government agencies, including DHS and NSA, without having to protect any personally identifying data of its customers, without a court order. It effectively immunizes ISPs from privacy lawsuits for disclosing customer information, grants them anti-trust protection on colluding on cybersecurity issues and allows them to bypass privacy laws when sharing data with each other.
Businesses

Submission + - Europe's Largest IT Company to Ban Internal Email 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, Europe's Largest IT Company, wants a "zero email" policy to be in place in 18 months, arguing that only 10 per cent of the 200 electronic messages his employees receive per day on average turn out to be useful and that staff spend between 5-20 hours handling emails every week. "The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool," says Breton. "The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently." Instead Breton wants staff at Atos, an international information technology corporation which operates in 42 countries worldwide, with over 78,500 employees, to use chat-type collaborative services inspired by social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter as surveys show that the younger generation have already all but scrapped email, with only 11 per cent of 11 to 19 year-olds using it,. For his part Breton hasn't sent a work email in three years. "If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message. Emails cannot replace the spoken word.""
Businesses

Submission + - Does Open Source Software Cost Jobs? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "John Spencer, a British blogger and tech educator, is convinced that free and open source software, which he's promoted for years, is costing IT jobs, as UK schools cut support staff no longer needed. But does the argument really hold up? It turns out that the services he's focused on are actually cloud services that are reducing the needs for schools to provide their own tech infrastructure. Of couse, it's also true that many of those cloud services are themselves based on open source tech."
Cloud

Submission + - UK Men Get 4 Years For Inciting Riots Via Facebook

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In addition to the 12 arrest from last week, a judge has sentenced 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw and 22-year-old Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan to four years in prison for their failed attempts to use Facebook to incite riots in the UK. The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent. The two men were convicted for using Facebook to encourage violent disorder in their hometowns in northwest England.

Feed Wired: Microsoft Wants the Milk Without Buying the Cow (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed

Microsoft's grand internet strategy, it turns out, is still Yahoo, despite walking away from a pursuit of the company two weeks ago.

Microsoft said on Sunday that it "is considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo." Microsoft, however, did not rule out making a takeover offer in the future. (Yahoo's response was that it has "confirmed with Microsoft that it is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo at this time.")

What has changed? Well, obviously it was the emergence of Carl Icahn and a proxy fight that is likely to be supported by other large disappointed shareholders of Yahoo.

But, more important, it is apparent that Microsoft doesn't have much of an alternative plan in its push to challenge Google.

In a memo to employees on Sunday, Kevin Johnson, who runs Microsoft's online business, acknowledged that "the fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet, and we've been in this position longer than we'd all like."

His memo also said that a "major initiative" in search would be announced on Wednesday.

The "alternative transaction" that Microsoft is proposing, according to several reports, is similar to the alliance that Yahoo has been pursuing with Google, one that is expected to be announced this week.

It would be a partnership on ads sold by Microsoft on Yahoo search results. The advantage for Yahoo is that an alliance with Microsoft would be more likely to pass regulatory scrutiny than one with Google, which would tie up 90 percent of the search market.

But a search-advertising deal, while potentially beneficial to Yahoo, is unlikely to dissuade Icahn and other investors who would prefer to get $31 for each of their Yahoo shares.

"Microsoft is trying to get the milk without buying the cow, and if you look at Icahn's history, he has never been used that way," someone "familiar with his thinking" told Reuters. "He does not want to see Yahoo pushed into some joint venture with Microsoft and is not going to be used to push Yahoo into it."

Michael Arrington on TechCrunch says, "whatever happens, it's clear that Microsoft is very much in the driver's seat, and Yahoo's head is spinning."

"I can't imagine this can go on for much longer. And frankly, Yahoo's stockholders and employees deserve some kind of mercy killing at this point."

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