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Submission + - SPAM: Pentagon Surveilling Americans Without a Warrant, Senator Reveals

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Pentagon is carrying out warrantless surveillance of Americans, according to a new letter written by Senator Ron Wyden and obtained by Motherboard. Senator Wyden's office asked the Department of Defense (DoD), which includes various military and intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), for detailed information about its data purchasing practices after Motherboard revealed special forces were buying location data. The responses also touched on military or intelligence use of internet browsing and other types of data, and prompted Wyden to demand more answers specifically about warrantless spying on American citizens.

Some of the answers the DoD provided were given in a form that means Wyden's office cannot legally publish specifics on the surveillance; one answer in particular was classified. In the letter Wyden is pushing the DoD to release the information to the public. A Wyden aide told Motherboard that the Senator is unable to make the information public at this time, but believes it would meaningfully inform the debate around how the DoD is interpreting the law and its purchases of data. "I write to urge you to release to the public information about the Department of Defense's (DoD) warrantless surveillance of Americans," the letter, addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, reads.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Information on half billion Facebook users leaked online (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by quonset
quonset writes: A user in a low level hacking forum on Saturday published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.

Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users' phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook's password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user's phone number.

A Facebook spokesperson told Insider that the data was scraped due to a vulnerability that the company patched in 2019.

Submission + - SPAM: Nuclear Should Be Considered Part of Clean Energy Standard, White House Says

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: More details have emerged about the climate and energy priorities of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, and they include support for nuclear power and carbon capture with sequestration (CCS). In a press conference yesterday with reporters, White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said the administration would seek to implement a clean energy standard that would encourage utilities to use greener power sources. She added that both nuclear and CCS would be included in the administration’s desired portfolio. The clean energy standard adds a climate dimension to the Biden administration’s recently announced infrastructure plan, seeking to put the US on a path to eliminating carbon pollution.

“We think a CES is appropriate and advisable, and we think the industry itself sees it as one of the most flexible and most effective tools,” McCarthy told reporters. “The CES is going to be fairly robust and it is going to be inclusive." McCarthy did not provide details about how far a CES would go in supporting nuclear power. It’s possible that the policy may only cover plants that are currently operating, but it may also extend to include new plants. The former is more likely than the latter, though, given the challenges and costs involved in building new nuclear capacity.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Are you rich? Is your dad a senator? (Score 1) 1059

by seidojohn (#38618196) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way To Deal With Roving TSA Teams?

From your link:
"U.S. vs Davis goes onto to state '[an administrative search is allowed if] no more intrusive or intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives, confined in good faith to that purpose, and passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly.'"

So, is the answer to this Ask Slashdot: Elect not to use that form of transportation (or at least that particular station) that day?

That seems almost too simple. Can one really just say, "Okay, if you need to search me in order for me to get on this train, then I'll just leave the station?" That's been my plan, but I haven't had the opportunity to try it out, thankfully.

Comment Re:"Minority Report" strikes again (Score 2, Interesting) 238

by seidojohn (#26673745) Attached to: New Ads That Watch You
Actually, the people who made Minority Report (the movie, not the story) got their idea for the way it would look and be used from an actual project:
http://oblong.com

From the page:

The similarity is no coincidence: one of Oblong's founders served as science advisor to Minority Report and based the design of those scenes directly on his earlier work at MIT.

Comment Re:This is microsoft trying to help kill open sour (Score 2, Insightful) 383

by seidojohn (#25257199) Attached to: Microsoft Treating "Windows-Only" As Open Source
Isn't this pretty much why RMS argues against using the phrase "open source"?

IIRC, his point was basically that "free software" allows you to study, modify, and use the software. Open source, on the other hand, means just that; the source is there for you to look at, but different licenses have different restrictions on the use and modification of the code.

In RMS's own words: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

OSI's definition of Open Source: http://opensource.org/docs/osd

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