The recently-unveiled US National Security Agency program that collects telephone records belonging to millions of Americans tracks only a small number of calls made each day, under 30-percent, officials with knowledge of the policy told reporters Friday. The NSA has spent years collecting metadata – which includes the numbers dialed, number of calls received, time of call, duration of the call, and other information – from landline phones.
Author: mediahitman
Finnish police have asked Wikipedia to reveal details of its donation campaign in the country to determine whether the free online encyclopedia is in breach of Finland’s fundraising laws. Law enforcement wants to take a look at the encyclopedia’s donation program – which runs globally – as well as the Finnish version of the website, fi.wikipedia.org, according to a police letter posted by Wikimedia.
Citing worries about foreign surveillance efforts, the government of Switzerland has ordered tighter control methods on its own computer and phone technology systems in order to prevent Swiss communications from being monitored. The Swiss Federal Council, a seven-member committee that serves as the head of the Swiss government and is responsible for enacting federal policy, admitted concern about other governments spying on official communications within Switzerland.
British intelligence has its own hacker subdivision that uses questionable practices for hunting down enemies of the state, reveals a new leak from Edward Snowden. GCHQ is fighting Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists with DDoS attacks and malware. A classified document obtained by NBC News reveals that the British secret service is brandishing a cyber-sword in the guise of the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), an intelligence unit not constrained by domestic or international laws.
The UN Human Rights Committee has blamed the Vatican for indulging longstanding policies enabling priests to sexually abuse children, and called to open pedophile files and disclose the names of those clergymen who assisted in concealing such crimes. The Vatican’s UN representative hit back saying the report was distorted, unfair and ideologically biased.
Around 1 a.m. on April 16th last year, a team of attackers cut phone likes and took out 17 power transformers at a PG&E substation south of San Jose, nearly causing a blackout throughout Silicon Valley. According to the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it was the “most significant incident of domestic terrorism” involving the nation’s power grid. No one has been charged or arrested in the attack.
Amid a rise in popularity of cryptocurrency, the financially floundering US Postal Service is considering the possibility of adding a bitcoin exchange to its current roster of non-bank financial services. The USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) led a webinar last week on bitcoin and other digital currencies to “explore the possibilities” of setting up bitcoin and other digital-currency exchanges at post offices as a means of boosting revenue.
The Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker group supportive of Syrian President Bashar Assad, claimed Tuesday it managed to hack Facebook.com, just in time for the social network’s tenth anniversary. The hackers first claimed to subvert Facebook.com in a tweet published at approximately 6:30 EST. A cursory search of the WHOIS domain registrar indicated that the email address tied to Facebook had indeed been changed to a Syrian gmail account.
United States President Barack Obama’s deputy drug czar admitted this week that weed isn’t as harmful as alcohol, but in the meantime the administration still shows no sign it will alter its official stance on marijuana. Michael Botticelli, the deputy director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, was speaking before Congress on Tuesday this week when he was roped into a debate on the dangerous effects — or lack thereof — of marijuana.
The club of Mac OS X lovers has gained an unlikely member: North Korea. The country’s new operating system has been stylized to look like Apple’s software, leaked screenshots have revealed. Reports suggest that only a handful of North Koreans have access to the latest IT technologies. But when an American computer scientist who lectured at Pyongyang University took a stroll to an official retailer in the capital to get himself a copy of the country’s operating system (OS)
Sweden’s and Iceland’s Pirate Party representatives have jointly nominated whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning for 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. For Snowden, it is the fourth such nomination – his third this year. “We are nominating Manning and Snowden together because the courage of Manning inspired in Snowden and both of them have inspired thousands of people all over the world to speak truth to power and demand transparency and accountability in their own societies,”
The local neighborhood watch may be beefing up its robotic arsenal if a new technology startup gets its way anytime soon. In a bid to make local communities safer and give local law enforcement agencies more tools to fight crime, California-based Knightscope recently unveiled a line of K5 robots that it believes will “predict and prevent crime with an innovative combination of hardware, software and social engagement.”
The US eavesdropped on former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over his staunch criticism of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, says a new report by German journalists. Schroeder was added to the NSA espionage targets list as number 388 by 2002, Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and NDR revealed in their reports on Tuesday.
Government agencies in the United States are often failing to implement even the most basic deterrents that would boost their cybersecurity efforts, a new Senate report found. According to the report – authored by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and staff members at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee – numerous federal agencies are leaving themselves open to cyberattacks simply by declining to fix simple, straightforward network problems.
A record number of Americans were set free in 2013 after being wrongfully convicted of a crime, according to new data from the National Registry of Exonerations. According to the report, 87 people were exonerated in the United States last year, and 40 of those freed were related to murder convictions. Almost 20 percent of all cases involved individuals who originally pleaded guilty to the charges they were accused of, primarily because they were offered a reduced sentence in exchange for their admission of guilt.
The United States federal government may not be ready to sanction marijuana use, but a new agriculture bill is set to legalize preliminary stages of hemp production in states that allow the practice. A new farm bill, passed by Congress on Tuesday, would allow universities and state agriculture departments to establish industrial hemp growing programs.
Offending King Hamad can now result in up to seven years in prison, Bahrain announced Tuesday. The news comes just days before the third anniversary of the Shiite-led, Arab Spring-inspired protests against the kingdom’s Sunni monarchy. Bahrain amended its 1976 penal code to carry a minimum one-year and maximum seven-year sentence, including a fine of up to US$26,000, for “publicly offending the king of Bahrain, its national flag or emblem,” state news agency BNA reported.
I found this interesting article in New Jersey: Police on a routine patrol here early Saturday morning found radioactive material coming from a storage unit. County and state HAZMAT units responded to the scene after it was first reported at 3:17 a.m., and confirmed the presence of radium-226 isotopes.