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Submission + - Publish Georgia's state laws, you'll get sued for copyright and lose 2

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: If you publish Georgia’s state laws, you’ll get sued for copyright and lose

Malamud thinks reading the law shouldn't cost anything. So a few years back, he scanned a copy of the state of Georgia's official laws, known as the Official Georgia Code Annotated, or OCGA. Malamud made USB drives with two copies on them, one scanned copy and another encoded in XML format. On May 30, 2013, Malamud sent the USB drives to the Georgia speaker of the House, David Ralson, and the state's legislative counsel, as well as other prominent Georgia lawyers and policymakers. ... ... Now, the case has concluded with US District Judge Richard Story having published an opinion (PDF) that sides with the state of Georgia. The judge disagreed with Malamud's argument that the OCGA can't be copyrighted and also said Malamud's copying of the laws is not fair use. "The Copyright Act itself specifically lists 'annotations' in the works entitled to copyright protection," writes Story. "Defendant admits that annotations in an unofficial code would be copyrightable."

It could have been worse, at least he was not criminally charged liked Aaron Schwartz.

Submission + - Jet strikes drone near Heathrow airport

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: A British Airways flight Sunday appears to have collided with a drone on a flight bound for London's busy Heathrow Airport in what may be the first such incident involving a major airline.

The flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Heathrow, Europe's busiest hub, is believed to have struck a drone, the London Metropolitan Police said in a statement. The plane landed safely following the incident, which occurred around 12:50 p.m. local time.

"It was only a matter of time before we had a drone strike given the huge numbers being flown around by amateurs who don't understand the risks and the rules," said BALPA flight safety specialist Steve Landells, adding "much more education of drone users and enforcement of the rules is needed to ensure our skies remain safe from this threat."

Submission + - UK gov't can demand backdoors, give prison sentences for disclosing them (arstechnica.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Buried in the 300 pages of the draft Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the Snooper's Charter), published on Wednesday, is something called a "technical capability notice" (Section 189). Despite its neutral-sounding name, this gives the UK's home secretary almost unlimited power to impose "an obligation on any relevant operators"—any obligation—subject to the requirement that "the Secretary of State considers it is reasonable to do so."

There is also the proviso that "it is (and remains) practicable for those relevant operators to comply with those requirements," which probably rules out breaking end-to-end encryption, but would still allow the home secretary to demand that companies add backdoors to their software and equipment.

That's bad enough, but George Danezis, an associate professor in security and privacy engineering at University College London, points out that the Snooper's Charter is actually much, much worse. The Investigatory Powers Bill would also make it a criminal offence, punishable with up to 12 months in prison and/or a fine, for anyone involved to reveal the existence of those backdoors, in any circumstances (Section 190(8).)

Submission + - Controversial company offers a new way to make a baby (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A controversial fertility company called OvaScience is preoccupied by an enduring mystery in human biology--why eggs fail--and the palpable hope that we can do something about it. The company offers a new treatment, called AUGMENT, based on what it considers to be egg precursor cells found in a woman’s ovaries. AUGMENT, which costs UP TO $25,000, along with thousands more in clinic fees and roughly $25,000 for the IVF cycle that must accompany it, relies on mitochondria from putative egg precursor cells to boost the success of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Seventeen babies have been born so far. The company, which has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, is poised to introduce a second treatment. But many scientists doubt that egg precursor cells actually exist.

Submission + - Android App Mutates Source Code, Spreads Virally And Enables Mesh Networks (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the Delft University of Technology have developed a self-replicating, mutating Android app which can create on-the-fly mesh networks in the event of an infrastructural disaster, or the enabling of internet kill switches by oppressive regimes. The app's source is available at GitHub, and the app itself requires no root privileges to propagate. It can self-compile while it mutates — for example, from a game to a calculator — in transit from one Android device to another, and compatibility with iOS and Windows phones is anticipated.

Submission + - The $6,000 Computer Desk That Lets You Lie Down While You Work

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: We've all read about standing desks and treadmill desks but now Rachel Gillet reports at Business Insider about the Altwork Station, a workstation that allows users to sit, stand, and recline while they work on their computers. Designed to accomodate two computer screens, the manufacturer says their new product is the ultimate combination for workplace productivity. "Most experts agree that humans should change positions and move throughout the day. We believe movement throughout the day is important," says the company who targets "high intensity" computer users, which it defines as people who spend at least four hours a day in front of a computer and are required to focus on complex tasks for extended periods of time. If the $5,900 ($3,900, if you pre-order) reclining workstation is not for you, there are other options you may want to consider including the scooter desk, bicycle desk, and hamster wheel desk.

Submission + - First Ever Remote-Access-Trojan That Can Target Android, Linux, Mac & Window

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hackers have put on sale OmniRAT, a remote access trojan that can target Androids, Linux, Mac, and Windows PCs. The tool costs $25-$50, which is only a fraction of $200-$300,the price of DroidJack, another Android RAT. Avast is currently reporting that the RAT was used this summer in Germany, spread to victims via SMS messages. The Softpedia article about OmniRAT includes a video, but declined to post the tool's homepage. You can easily find it via a Google search.

Submission + - Kali Linux 2.0 Released - (kali.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Kali Linux 2.0 has been released, together which an assortment of interesting new features. Most importantly, Kali is now a rolling distribution, using Debian Testing as their upstream source. Together with this, there are huge changes to the UI, including a fully fledged, custom GNOME 3 environment, as well as support for a myriad of other Desktop Environments. I for one am loving 2.0. What are your thoughts? comments?

Submission + - 'Privacy Visor' Can Fool Face-Recognition Cameras (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Dark shades aren't enough to go incognito in the face of facial recognition camera systems. For that you need the Privacy Visor developed Japan's National Institute of Informatics. The visor consists of a lightweight, wraparound, semitransparent plastic sheet fitted over eyewear frames and works by reflecting overhead light into the camera lens, causing the area around the eyes to appear much brighter than normal.

Submission + - Tech Firms, Retailers Propose Security, Privacy Rules for Internet of Things (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: As the Obama Administration and the rest of the federal bureaucracy hem and haw about whether- and how to regulate the fast-growing Internet of Things, a group representing private sector firms has come out with a framework for ensuring privacy and security protections in IoT products that is lightyears ahead of anything under consideration inside the Beltway.

The Online Trust Association (https://otalliance.org/) — a group made up of such staunch civil liberties and privacy advocates as Target Stores (?), Microsoft and home security firm ADT — on Tuesday released a draft of its IoT Trust Framework (PDF here: https://otalliance.org/system/...), which offers voluntary best practices in security, privacy and what OTA calls "sustainability" (read "lifecycle management") for home automation wearable health & fitness technologies.

So how is it? Pretty damned good, according to this post at The Security Ledger.(https://securityledger.com/2015/08/tech-retail-firms-propose-privacy-standards-for-internet-of-things/)

"The OTA guidelines set a high bar for IoT device makers. On the security front, the framework calls on manufacturers to employ end-to-end encryption, including device connections to mobile devices and applications and wireless communications to the cloud or other devices. Device makers should include features that force the retirement of default passwords after their first use and to configure multiple user roles with separate passwords for administrative and end-user access.

"Privacy policies must be made available to potential buyers prior to product purchase and disclose the consequences of declining to opt in or out of policies, such as data collection. And, in a nod to consumer advocates' complaints about long and legalistic end-user license agreements (EULA) and privacy policies that are the prevalent today, device makers would be required to 'maximize readability.'

"Beyond that, manufacturers must conspicuously disclose all personally identifiable data types and attributes collected. A health or fitness band would need to inform potential buyers that it harvests data such as their physical location and biometric data like heart rate, pulse, blood pressure and so on."

The standards also address issues such as lifecycle management for IoT devices. Craig Spiezle, Executive Director and President of OTA notes that many home appliances have life spans that are measured in decades, not months or years. Under the framework, device makers should have a plan for supporting and updating them during that time, or risk creating a population of insecure, off-warranty endpoints that are subject to tampering and attack.

Spiezle said that such questions and issues are currently "uncharted waters" in the consumer space. And, in fact, issues related to data collection and disclosure in connection to smart appliances have already come to the fore. In 2014, device maker LG issued a firmware update for its SmartTVs that disabled the "connected" features of the device if users would not agree to lengthy new Terms of Service and Privacy Agreements. The revised documents granted LG permission to monitor and record their viewing habits and their interactions with the device, including voice commands. (https://securityledger.com/2014/05/bad-actor-with-update-lg-says-no-monitoring-no-smart-tv/)

Submission + - Researchers Fight VR Focus-Switching Headaches (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the biggest problems virtual reality headsets have yet to overcome are the headaches they cause in a subset of users. For a lot of users, this is caused by needing to rapidly switch your focus between objects that are (virtually) near and far away. "Trying to focus on 'far away' objects on that stereoscopic screen means keeping a fixed focal distance but changing the 'vergence' angle of your eyes—in essence, going a little cross-eyed for a moment." Fortunately, researchers at Stanford have figured out a partial solution. They "created a prototype headset (PDF) that includes a translucent LCD panel sitting about 1cm in front of a standard, opaque LCD. With some GPU pre-processing, this 'light field stereoscope' headset can display nearby objects on the front LCD and farther-away objects on the rear, creating what the researchers call a '4D' image that layers a basic virtual light field on top of the usual stereoscopic left/right eye 3D separation." This provides an easy, low-tech way to let the eyes focus more easily, and alleviate the strain that causes headaches.

Submission + - US Government detained Laura Poitras every time she flew .. (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration).

Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.

Submission + - Facebook's new chief security officer wants to set a date to kill Flash

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook’s new chief security officer, Alex Stamos, has stated publicly that he wants to see Adobe end Flash. This weekend Stamos tweeted: "It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day. Even if 18 months from now, one set date is the only way to disentangle the dependencies and upgrade the whole ecosystem at once."

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One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. -- Joe Martin

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