How Apple is using military-grade aerial spy drones to build 3D Maps

Apple has recruited a private fleet of jets equipped with military-grade imaging technology to produce HD 3D imagery for its newly announced Maps service

If you thought Google’s Street View was invasive, get ready to be shocked by Apple’s latest plans for its newly announced Maps services, which uses privately recruited jets packing military-grade imaging technology to capture HD 3D images of earth.

This type of technology and vantage point was previously the sole reserve of Intelligence Agencies, such as the CIA and MI5, and the military. It’s also the first time a commercial company has attempted something as ambitious – just imagine the amount of data that’s involved when shooting in this detail and quality.

Apple’s imaging technologies are said to to be so powerful they could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows, which is the very same technology the US military uses to identify terrorists in Afghanistan.

Each plane is equipped with multiple cameras taking high-resolution photographs of buildings and landmarks from every possible angle, which are then compiled to make three-dimensional images.

‘The technology is understood to have already been tested in 20 cities across the world including London, following Apple's acquisition of C3 Technologies, a Swedish 3D mapping business, last year,’ claims The Telegraph.

Google also confirmed last week that it would be doing exactly the same thing in a bid to bring 3D maps of metropolitan areas to its Android platform. The search giant made the following statement regarding its new data collection methods:

‘Since 2006, we’ve had textured 3D buildings in Google Earth, and we are excited to announce that we will begin adding 3D models to entire metropolitan areas to Google Earth on mobile devices.

‘This is possible thanks to a combination of our new imagery rendering techniques and computer vision that let us automatically create 3D cityscapes, complete with buildings, terrain and even landscaping, from 45-degree aerial imagery. By the end of the year we aim to have 3D coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people.’

That means two of the world’s biggest corporations are now flying around in private jets equipped with military-grade surveillance gear taking pictures of cities, road, mountains and, most importantly, your home. And, predictably, not everybody is happy about this.

‘The next generation of maps is taking us over the garden fence,’ said Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, in a statement.

He added: You won’t be able to sunbathe in your garden without worrying about an Apple or Google plane buzzing overhead taking pictures.’

However, some industry experts disagree, claiming Google and Apple will be forced to blur out people’s homes and gardens like Google’s Street View does with faces.

That still doesn’t change the fact that Apple and Google are now in the business of using military-grade surveillance equipment on the general public, though, and while many pundits have already attempted to discredit the concerns raised by Big Brother Watch, it's still very easy to see why people are getting worried about the powers that corporations like Apple and Google now have at their disposal.

Gmail accounts targeted by 'state-sponsored attackers' using Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability

Both Google and Microsoft have put out alerts about an unpatched, zero-day hole in Internet Explorer that didn't get fixed on Patch Tuesday and is actively being exploited in the wild.

According to ZDNet, those attacks are apparently being launched by the "state-sponsored attackers" that Google warned Gmail users about last week.

Neither Google nor Microsoft referred to those state attackers in their respective security warnings. ZDNet attributed that particular detail to a source it said was "close to these investigations".

This source confirmed to ZDNet that the attacks motivated Google to warn Gmail users last week about the attackers.

As ZDNet pointed out, Gmail users have been reporting on Twitter that they've been hit by the Gmail warning.

Google security engineer Andrew Lyons wrote in the company's security blog that Google reported the vulnerability to Microsoft on May 30 and that the two companies have been working on the problem since.

He wrote on Tuesday:

Today Microsoft issued a Security Advisory describing a vulnerability in the Microsoft XML component. We discovered this vulnerability - which is leveraged via an uninitialized variable - being actively exploited in the wild for targeted attacks.

Lyons said that the attacks are spreading both from malicious web pages set up to snare Internet Explorer users and through Office documents.

Users running any flavor of supported Windows are vulnerable, from XP onwards up to and including Windows 7. All supported editions of Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 are also vulnerable.

The hole hasn't been stitched up yet, but Microsoft is suggesting a workaround that will help prevent it from being exploited.

Microsoft's security advisory recommends that IE and Office users immediately install a Fix it solution, downloadable with instructions from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 2719615, until the company gets the final fix out.

The vulnerability crops up when Microsoft XML Core Services 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 try to access an object in memory that hasn't been initialized, which can corrupt memory such that an attacker could execute arbitrary code on a hijacked machine.

A victim would have to visit a maliciously crafted site using IE to suffer an attack. An attacker might lure users into visiting a boobytrapped site by enticing them to click on a link in an email or via messaging.

A successful attack grants the intruder the same user rights as the logged-on user. Therefore, a mitigating factor is to configure accounts with fewer rights, as opposed to operating with administrative user rights.

Microsoft noted that by default, IE on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2 runs in a restricted mode known as Enhanced Security Configuration. That also mitigates the vulnerability.

As far as bolting down Gmail goes, Sophos's Graham Cluley has a collection of tips on how to stop your Gmail account from getting hacked.

It's definitely worth a read. Here's a quick cheat-sheet; Graham gives you more detail on these items in his article:

• Set up two step verification
• Check if your Gmail messages are being forwarded without your permission
• Look where your Gmail account is being accessed from
• Choose a unique, hard-to-crack password
• Secure your computer
• Why are you using Gmail anyway?

OK, that last one's not a tip, per se, but it's food for thought if you are, in fact, important enough that a state would want to attack your Gmail account.

If you are, think twice about using a free web email provider for sensitive information. If you're working for the government or the military, like Graham said, put all that sensitive information on secure systems instead.

United Kingdom Proposes Mega Archive Of Citizens’ Internet Activity, Phone Calls, And Messaging

To stay positive, think of it as the creation of a giant quilted tapestry, weaving together everything anyone in the country says or does. Via the Washington Post:

British authorities on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. — and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation’s top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

The surveillance proposed in the government’s 118-page draft bill would provide authorities a remarkably rich picture of their citizens’ day-to-day lives, tracking nearly everything they do online, over the phone, or even through the post.

Home Office Secretary Theresa May said in an editorial published ahead of the bill’s unveiling that only evil-doers should be frightened. “Without changing the law the only freedom we would protect is that of criminals, terrorists and pedophiles,” she said.

What May didn’t mention in her editorial — and the Home Office left off its press release — was that the government also is seeking to keep logs of citizens’ Internet history, giving officials access to the browsing habits of roughly 60 million people — including sensitive visits to medical, dating, or pornography websites.

Prefer to send mail the old-fashioned way? That would be monitored, too. Address details and other markers printed onto envelopes would be copied; parcel tracking information would be logged as well.

Source: Disinformation

Big Pharma Continues Drug Experiments in Underdeveloped Nations for Profit

Pharmaceutical corporations, like Novo Nordisk, have been using underdeveloped countries as testing grounds for experimental drug trials. Doctors are beginning to speak out against this practice, citing that it has more to do with increasing profits and less to do with scientific research.

In countries like India and South Africa, where the citizens pay for their medicines, these drug trials are quite profitable for drug corporations.

While drug licensing authorities do not require post-marketing studies, major drug corporations regularly contend that they must conduct more experiments on the human population. Using third-world nations is the easiest way to do so considering that the general population in those countries does not have the ability to speak out and protest.

Edwin Gale, emeritus professor of diabetic medicine at Bristol University in the UK, published a paper that questions the practices and purposes of drug trials in underdeveloped nations.

Pharmaceutical corporations, conducting post-marketing trials for analogue insulin (which cost more than 4 times as much as conventional human insulin) so that new forms of insulin can be produced for sufferers of type 2 diabetes was studied by Gale.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) reviewed the data provided by Gale and found that there was no additional cost benefit for people.

Gale maintains that since 2005 more than 400,000 people worldwide have been coerced into participating in post-marketing trials involving analogue insulin. These trials, providing limited scientific value, were conducted on nations where their citizens were of low-income and of little value to the drug corporations.

Gale notes that the doctors who participated in the trials did so without overt malice but showed that the “patient or healthcare system pays for a more expensive agent instead of one that is cheaper and equally effective, and the public is offered misleading claims of comparative merit based on studies of limited scientific value.”

John Yudkin, emeritus professor of medicine at University College in London, conducted a second study where he found that Novo Nordisk “used trade agreements in South Africa to block the government’s use of generic antiretroviral drugs” and in 2010 “Novo Nordisk invoked negative headlines by threatening to withdraw all its products from Greece because of a governmental order to cut all drug prices by 25%.”

In 1996, Pfizer conducted controversial drug experiments using Nigerian children. They were given the then unregistered antibiotic Trovan at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kano.

According to officials in Kano, 50 innocent children died because of the experiment; while untold others developed mental and physical deformities.

This experiment was perfectly timed. While a meningitis epidemic broke out in Nigeria, Pfizer happen to coincide this problem with the reveal of Trovan, which was distributed to Nigerians in response to the “outbreak”.

To receive the Food and Drug Administration’s certification of approval, Pfizer used Africa as their clinical trial laboratory to produce the proof they needed to make Trovan a profitable endeavor.

Africa has been the scene of numerous reports of unethical experimentation and deadly clinical trials conducted by the pharmaceutical corporations over decades. While the citizens of Africa are largely illiterate and ignorant of the damages clinical trials can produce, they are the perfect people to experiment on. Their governments use the clinical trials as if they were distributing safe medication in a basic threat to either take the experimental drugs or receive no medicine at all.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Aubrey Levin headed a project that forced South African gay and lesbian army soldiers to undergo sex change operations while enduring electroshock therapy, chemical castration, and various medical experiments in military hospitals.

In the 1970s Depo-Provera was used as a population control experiment in Zimbabwe under the guise of “family planning programs”.

Sterilization experiments were conducted in Namibia by Dr. Eugen Fischer against mixed-race children as an attempt to justify the national ban of mixed-race marriages in South West Africa. Fischer went on to conduct similar experiments on victims in Jewish concentration camps with Hams Harmsen, founder of the German branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

The smallpox eradication vaccine program sponsored by the World Health Organization was responsible for unleashing AIDS in Africa. About 100 million Africans living in central Africa were inoculated by the WHO.

Prior to 1979, there were no reported cases of HIV/AIDS in Africa, according to Luc Montagnier, a French Pasteur scientist. By calculating Montagnier’s isolation of the first HIV case in Paris, France, the first cases of HIV must have begun in the fall of 1982.

While AIDS was first announced in 1981, there were yet no reported cases proving that there was an African epidemic. Those populations in underdeveloped nations like Africa succumbed to the disease much quicker. Because of the lack of access to medical care, up to 40% of the population is estimated to be killed off.

For more than three decades, through medical terrorism, pharmaceutical corporations have used third-world people as guinea pigs for experimental drugs without regard for their health or even their very lives.

As of today, the drug corporations have not answered for their crimes against humanity. They will not be brought to justice until we expose their actions and demand that they be held accountable.

Source: Activist Post

The Insects Are Watching: The Future of Government Surveillance Technology

In June of 2011, the US military admitted to having drone technology so sophisticated that it could be the size of a bug.

In what is referred to as the “microaviary” on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, drones are in development and design to replicate the flight patterns of moths, hawks and other air-borne creatures of the natural world.

Greg Parker, aerospace engineer, explains: “We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight” for the purpose of carrying out espionage or kill missions.

Cessna-sized Predator drones, used to carry out unmanned attacks, are known around the world. The US Pentagon has an estimated 7,000 aerial drones in their arsenal.

In 2011, the Pentagon requested $5 billion for drones from Congress by the year 2030. 

Their investigative technology is now moving toward “spy flies” equipped with sensors and mircocameras to detect enemies and nuclear weapons.

Parker is using helicopter technology to allow his computer-driven drone “dragonflies” to become precise intelligence gathering weapons. 

To have a computer do it 100 per cent of the time, and to do it with winds, and to do it when it doesn’t really know where the vehicle is, those are the kinds of technologies that we’re trying to develop. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has unveiled hummingbird drones that can fly at speeds of 11 miles per hour.

DARPA is also inserting computer chips into moth pupae in the hopes of hatching “cyborg moths”.

Within DARPA is the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project (HIMEM), whose aim is to develop shutterbugs – insects with cameras attached to their very nervous system that can be controlled remotely. Under HIMEM, there are researchers working on cyborg beetles.

Other institutions are hard at work for the US government, developing more insect technology.

The California Institute of Technology has created a “mircobat ornithopter” that flies and fits comfortably in the palm of your hand.

A team at Harvard University has successfully built a housefly-like robot with synthetic wings that buzz at 120 beats per second.

Back in 2007, at the International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, Japanese researchers unveiled a radio-controlled hawk-moth.

While the US military would have the American public believe that these new “fly drones” are used for overseas missions, insect drones have been spotted surveilling streets right here in the US.

It is believed that these insect-like drones are high-tech surveillance tools used by the Department of Homeland Security.

The US government is experimenting with different types of micro-surveillance capabilities, such as cultivating insects with computer chips in them in the hopes of breeding software directly into their bodies to control flight patterns remotely.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been working on this technology since the 1970s. Known as the “inscetothopter”, it was developed by the Office of Research and Development for the CIA. 

It appears to be a dragonfly; however, it contains a tiny gasoline engine to control its four wings. It was subsequently classified as a failure because it could not maintain flight against natural wind patterns.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has created a butterfly-shaped drone that is the smallest built thus far. It can hover in mid-flight, just as a helicopter and take pictures with its 0.15 gram camera and memory card.

The “butterfly” imitates nature so well, that birds and other insects are convinced it is real and not man-made.

Source: Activist Post