data_securt - Slashdot User

Obama: Government Can't Let Smartphones Be 'Black Boxes' (bloomberg.com) 546

Posted by BeauHD on Friday March 11, 2016 @08:58PM from the not-to-be-taken-literally dept.

JoeyRox writes: President Obama said Friday that smartphones -- like the iPhone the FBI is trying to force Apple to help it hack -- can't be allowed to be "black boxes," inaccessible to the government. He believes technology companies should work with the government on encryption rather than leaving the issue for Congress to decide. He went on to say, "If your argument is strong encryption no matter what, and we can and should create black boxes, that I think does not strike the kind of balance we have lived with for 200, 300 years, and it's fetishizing our phones above every other value." Obama's appearance on Friday at the event known as SXSW, the first by a sitting president, comes as the FBI tries to force Apple to help investigators access an iPhone used by one of the assailants in December's deadly San Bernardino, California, terror attack. "The question we now have to ask is, if technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong there's no key, there's no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?" Obama said. "If in fact you can't crack that at all, government can't get in, then everybody's walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket." He said compromise is possible and the technology industry must help design it.

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:01PM from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."

Black Hole Emits a 1,000-Light-Year-Wide Gas Bubble 145

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 09, 2010 @05:59PM from the reminds-me-of-a-buddy-of-mine dept.

PhrostyMcByte writes "12 million light-years away, in the outer spiral of galaxy NGC 7793, a bubble of hot gas approximately 1,000 light-years in diameter can be found shooting out of a black hole — one of the most powerful jets of energy ever seen. (Abstract available at Nature.) The bubble has been growing for approximately 200,000 years, and is expanding at around 1,000,000 kilometers per hour."

BlackBerry Bold Tops Radiation Ranking 189

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 25, 2010 @09:44PM from the woo-top-of-the-list-awesome dept.

geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "Data from the Environmental Working Group places the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as the mobile device with the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation among popular smartphones. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation, according to the latest 2010 Environmental Working Group ranking. Following the Bold 9700 are the Motorola Droid, the LG Chocolate and Google's HTC Nexus One. The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."

Apple Patches Massive Holes In OS X 246

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 20, 2010 @05:23PM from the well-it-wouldn't-be-polite-to-patch-windows dept.

Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost: "Apple's first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site." Hit the link for a list of the highlights among these fixes.

GPL Hindering Two-Way Code Sharing? 456

Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 02, 2007 @02:54AM from the thank-you-and-goodbye dept.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has some fascinating coverage of the recent rift between the OpenBSD developers and the Linux kernel developers. Proponents of the GPL defend their license for enforcing that their code can always be shared. However in the current debate the GPL is being added to BSD-licensed code, thereby preventing it from being shared back with the original authors of the code. Thus, a share-and-share-alike license is effectively preventing two-way sharing." We discussed an instance of this one-way effect a few days back.

Comment Re:OS-X under Xen? (Score 1) 707

by data_securt on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @03:11PM (#14718080) Attached to: OSx86 Cracked Again

Fair enough. IANAL. However, Apple isn't restricting which OS you can run on their hardware. They are restricting which hardware upon which you can run their software (which is *licensed*, not owned). There is a difference here. As far as I know, shrink wrap licenses are still the law of the land, and no serious threat to them has yet been raised. (Correct me if I'm wrong) Additionally, the government's desire for TPM, the existance of the DCMA, and the pro-business stance of the current administration, all make the hypothetical lawsuit far from a slam-dunk. IMHO, of course.

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