Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Ethos - a powerful documentary about our corrupt system

Presented by twice Oscar nominated actor and activist Woody Harrelson, this powerful new documentary blows the lid off our corrupt system.

From criminal conflicts of interest in politics, to unregulated corporate power, to a news media in the hands of multi-national conglomerates, to a military industrial complex that effectively owns our government.

Ethos looks at the systemic issues that work against democracy, the environment, democracy, justice and our own personal liberty.

We must stop the chemtrails

This is a very important interview regarding chemtrails and geo-engineering. The situation is getting very serious.

Contaminated water still a serious issue at Fukushima Daiichi

Capacity and Storage Volume of the Concentrated Saltwater Tank

Nearly two years after the onset of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, over 220,000 metric tons of contaminated water have been collected and stored on site, still another 75,000 tons remains in the reactor buildings.  Every day at least another 40 tons of contaminated water are created, requiring additional storage tanks to be constructed.

Currently the concentrated saltwater receiving tanks are 95% filled to capacity.  Currently 220,761 m3 of contaminated water is being stored, but the total capacity is only 232,000 m3.

The utility has been so far unable to prevent the contaminated water injected into the damaged reactors from flowing out of the buildings into the environment and even escaping directly into the ocean.  Accumulated water levels in the Turbine Buildings are assumed to increase daily, some of the accumulation due to the interaction between the groundwater on-site and the water inside of the buildings.

Workers at Fukushima Daiichi use a water treatment system called SARRY to remove cesium prior to storing water in tanks.  TEPCO is still working to complete construction of multi-nuclide removal equipment, but it is 4 months behind schedule.

The levels of radioactivity measured near the Unit 2 Sub-Drain have been on the rise since November, and while much focus has been justly applied to the continuous aerial release of radionuclides from the reactors themselves, with storage space running out it is critical to control the seeping of contamination through the local groundwater.

Radioactivity Density of Unit 2 Sub-drain

Source: The Denki Shimbun

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Who Will Save The Honey Bee? EU Mulls Pesticide Ban While US Set to Approve More



There are a number of grave ecological crises nagging at the status quo of modern life. Though the corporate media prefers not to cover the enduring impact of events like Fukushima, the Deepwater Horizon or Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder, the truth remains that these issues are vastly more important than most of the things we concern ourselves with.

The honey bee is unique in the animal kingdom for its critical importance to both the environment and the economy. Without the bee, the variety and amount of food for human consumption would drop dramatically and the many industries built around bee products would collapse.

The global decline in honey bee populations is attributed to a varying combination of 6 primary factors:
  1. Viruses and infections
  2. Attacks by parasites and invasive species
  3. Genetically modified plants
  4. Poor nutrition
  5. Environmental change and habitat fragmentation and loss
  6. Intensive use of agricultural pesticides
Right now worldwide bee colony collapse is accelerating at alarming rates, and beekeepers are expecting one of the worst years ever.

Read more »

Human Hormones Are Being Eclipsed By Synthetic Chemicals



A new study published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology has raised some disturbing possibilities regarding the dangers of common hormone-mimicking preservatives found in thousands of consumer products on the market today.[1]

Titled "Parabens detection in different zones of the human breast: consideration of source and implications of findings," researchers discussed the role that parabens -- a class of estrogen-mimicking chemicals widely used in drugs, foods and cosmetics -- may have in breast cancer and childhood disease.

The report focused on the findings of The Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Centre at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust published last month (March, 2012), which discovered five paraben esters in human breast tissue samples collected from 40 mastectomies from women with primary breast cancer.[2] The report revealed three things:

1) The ester form of parabens found within the breast tissue samples indicated a dermal route of exposure, as would occur through skin care products and underarm deodorants.

2) The paraben residues were found at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than the estrogen (estradiol) levels naturally found in human breast tissue.

3) Propylparaben was found in the highest concentration in the underarm area (axilla), where underarm deodorants are most used and breast cancer prevalence is at its highest.

While the World Health Organization considers the estrogenic properties of parabens to be a low toxicological risk due to it being 10,000-100,000 less potent than estradiol (E2), the 1 million-fold higher levels found within breast tissue sampled clearly indicate the magnitude of exposure more than compensates for the reduction in potency.

Also noted in the new study was a highly disturbing possibility: "For exposures in children, concern has already been raised that 'the estrogenic burden’ of parabens and their metabolites in blood may exceed the action of endogenous estradiol in childhood and the safety margin for propylparaben is very low when comparing worst-case exposure’ (Boberg et al., 2010)."

In other words, synthetic hormones from chemicals like parabens may actually be eclipsing the activity of endogenously produced (natural) hormones in our children. Given that 99.1% of the US population's urine samples (ages 6 or older) contain methylparaben, this issue has broad-ranging implications.

Presently, European regulations allow for the use of parabens in cosmetics at up to 0.4% by volume. The limits in the US are much less restricted. According to the FDA’s website: "The Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) reviewed the safety of methylparaben, propylparaben, and butylparaben in 1984 and concluded they were safe for use in cosmetic products at levels up to 25%. Typically parabens are used at levels ranging from 0.01 to 0.3%." Parabens are also FDA-approved for use as food preservatives.

Given the fact that modern-day toxicological risk assessments do not account for the adverse effects of chronic, low-dose exposures, nor the reality of synergistic toxicities, i.e. the reality that a chemical's adverse effects may be amplified when present alongside other chemicals, this new research points to a disturbing possibility: commonly used preservatives may be contributing greatly to the burden of disease in exposed populations -- especially infants and children, whose body burden is higher (lower body weight vs. chemical), susceptibility to chemically-induced genotoxicity higher (because their cells replicate more rapidly), and detoxification systems are less developed than adults.

It is becoming increasingly clear that in order to protect ourselves and especially our offspring from avoidable chemical exposures this country needs to implement the precautionary principle in its toxicological risk assessments: if there is indication that a chemical could do harm (based on cell and animal studies), it should be treated as if it actually does harm, and be regulated accordingly. Until then, we are effectively a living and breathing nation of guinea pigs.

Source: Activist Post

Horse meat found in Ikea's Swedish meatballs

Swedish furniture giant Ikea was drawn into Europe's widening food labeling scandal Monday as authorities said they had detected horse meat in frozen meatballs labeled as beef and pork and sold in 13 countries.

The Czech State Veterinary Administration said that horse meat was found in one-kilogram packs of frozen meatballs made in Sweden and shipped to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there. A total of 1,675 pounds of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.

Ikea spokeswoman Ylva Magnusson said meatballs from the same batch had gone out to Slovakia, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland. Magnusson said meatballs from that batch were taken off the shelves in Ikea stores in all those countries. Other shipments of meatballs were not affected, she added.

However, the company's Swedish branch announced on its Facebook page that it won't sell or serve any meatballs at its stores in Sweden out of concern for "potential worries among our customers."

Magnusson said Ikea saw no reason to extend that guidance globally. She said Ikea was conducting its own tests of the affected batch. She also said that two weeks ago Ikea tested a range of frozen food products, including meatballs, and found no traces of horse meat.

Ikea's stores feature restaurants and also sell typical Swedish food, including the so-called Kottbullar meatballs.

Read more: Fox News

"Six Strikes" Anti-Piracy Scheme Starts Today, With Mystery Punishments


Today the controversial "six-strikes" anti-piracy system kicks off in the United States. Soon the first BitTorrent users will receive so-called copyright alerts from their Internet provider and after multiple warnings subscribers will be punished. But, what these punishments entail remains a bit of a mystery. None of the participating ISPs have officially announced how they will treat repeat infringers and the CCI doesn’t have this information either.

Today the MPAA and RIAA, helped by five major Internet providers in the United States, will start to warn BitTorrent pirates.

The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures.

The scheme was initially announced during the summer of 2011 and after a series of delays it goes live today.

“Over the course of the next several days our participating ISPs will begin rolling out the system,” CCI Executive Director Jill Lesser just announced.

“Practically speaking, this means our content partners will begin sending notices of alleged P2P copyright infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those notices in the form of Copyright Alerts to consumers,” she adds.

Strangely enough, none of the Internet providers has officially announced what mitigation measures they will take to punish repeated infringers. TorrentFreak asked CCI to fill us in, but the organization doesn’t have this information either.

“Unfortunately the ISPs have not yet provided us with the exact mitigation measures,” a CCI spokesperson told us.

From leaked information we previously learned that AT&T will block users' access to some of the most frequently visited websites on the Internet, until they complete a copyright course. Verizon will slow down the connection speeds of repeated pirates, and Time Warner Cable will temporarily interrupt people's ability to browse the Internet.

The two remaining providers, Cablevison and Comcast, are expected to take similar measures. None of the ISPs will permanently disconnect repeat infringers as part of the plan.

Some skeptics have pointed out that the copyright alert system wont have much effect since there are many ways to beat the system. BitTorrent users, for example, can protect their privacy and prevent monitoring by using a VPN, proxy or seedbox.

Alternatively, some determined pirates may switch to other platforms that are not monitored, including Usenet, cyberlockers, streaming sites or offline swapping. Those who use private BitTorrent trackers may be safe for now, but monitoring company MarkMonitor was advised to start eyeing these sites as well.

For CCI and their partners these workarounds are not a major problem. They have said from the start that the program aims to educate the public, in particular more casual file-sharers.

While the copyright alert system is much more reasonable than the equivalents in France and New Zealand, there is the worrying possibility that it will be used to gather evidence to start legal action against individuals.

As we reported previously, Internet providers will have to inform copyright holders about which IP-addresses are repeatedly flagged. The MPAA and RIAA can then use this information to ask the court for a subpoena, so they can obtain the personal details of the account holder.

This possibility was also confirmed by leaked documents from AT&T.

"After the fifth alert, the content owner may pursue legal action against the customer, and may seek a court order requiring AT&T to turn over personal information to assist the litigation," AT&T explained.

There's no concrete indication that repeated infringers will be taken to court, and if this happens it’s not part of the copyright alert system.

More on this, and the other missing details on the “six strikes” system, will become clear during the coming months.

Source: Information Liberation

Student Invents Device that Charges Batteries with Radio and WIFI Waves



German university student, Dennis Siegel, invented a device that captures electromagnetic fields like WIFI and radio waves and converts them to stored energy in batteries.

His electromagnetic harvester won second place at this year's Digitale Medien (Digital Media) technology competition at the University of the Arts Bremen, Hochschulpreis when he successfully demonstrated charging one AA battery over the span of a day.

Siegel explains the device on his blog:
The omnipresence of electromagnetic fields is implied just by simple current flow. We are surrounded by electromagnetic fields which we are producing for information transfer or as a byproduct. Many of those fields are very capacitive and can be harvested with coils and high frequency diodes. Accordingly, I built special harvesting devices that are able to tap into several electromagnetic fields to exploit them. The energy is stored in an usual battery. So you can for example gain redundant energy from the power supply of a coffee machine, a cell phone or an overhead wire by holding the harvester directly into the electromagnetic field whose strength is indicated by a LED on the top of the harvester.

Depending on the strength of the electromagnetic field it is possible to charge a small battery within one day. The system is meant to be an option for granting access to already existing but unheeded energy sources. By exploring these sources it can create a new awareness of the invisible electromagnetic spaces while giving them a spatial dimension.

There are two types of harvester for different electromagnetic fields: a smaller harvester that is suitable for lower frequencies below 100Hz which you can find in the general mains (50/60Hz, 16,7Hz) and a bigger one that is suitable for lower and higher frequencies like radio broadcast (~100MHz), GSM (900/1800MHz) up to Bluetooth and WLAN (2,4GHz).
Here's a short video of Siegel finding strong enough electromagnetic frequencies to charge his battery:

Sunday, February 24, 2013

More Proof That News is Controlled by a Central Script Writer

Conan O'Brien once again plucks several clips from a wide variety of local news stations reading off the same script.

Trial of BP Over Deepwater Horizon Set for Monday



Nearly three years after the Deepwater Horizon accident dumped over four million barrels of toxic crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico, oil giant BP is set to face off against the Justice Department in court Monday.

It all started in April 2010 when a massive explosion on board the platform killed 11 workers and injured many others. The platform ultimately sank and set off a 3-month frenzy to cap the well as oil continued to gush into the Gulf.

BP says it will fight the government’s charges of gross negligence, saying “We have always been open to settlements on reasonable terms... faced with demands that are excessive and not based on reality or the merits of the case, we are going to trial.”

Transcript with links continues below...

Read more »

The Surprising Science of Happiness

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned.

Source: TED

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Patent on cannabis cures

For those of you who still have any doubts as to the miraculous healing powers of cannabis and THC Oil or do not believe that there is an ongoing international effort dead set on keeping this free and 100% organic medicine, along with all organic foods, supplements, and natural medicines from a diseased and dying global population.

On October 7, 2003 The United States Government as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services was granted a U.S. Patent (#6630507) on any and all uses and applications of: Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants.

[link to patft.uspto.gov]

In other words, THE GOVERNMENT ALREADY OWNS THE ORGANIC THC OIL BY FORCE... and now THEY OWN THE SYNTHETIC THC OIL BY PATENT... along with any and all combinations of the beneficial compounds found in cannabinoids. As you read through this document you will discover beyond any doubt whatsoever that cannabis has a tremendous variety of medicinal values and applications specific and provable enough to be granted a U.S. Patent, yet the Judicial Branch of our government continues to classify cannabis as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

How can they possibly say that cannabis has no medicinal qualities while at the same time they hold a patent that describes in great detail so many of the proven medicinal qualities that actually DO exist in cannabis?

There has been an ongoing effort to eliminate this ridiculous classification by a wide variety of activists and organizations for decades now but to date... the government holds all the cards and rules with a closed mind and an iron fist.

[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

The Abstract of the patent reads as follows:

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism.

[link to encrypted.google.com (secure)]
(The NMDA receptor is one of two kinds of receptors activated by glutimates).

This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of a wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and auto-immune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia.

Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil (mis-spelled in document - should read cannabidiol), are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannbinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (1) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH.sub3, and COCH.sub3. ##STR1##

In other words, it is useful to separate the natural components and use higher concentrations of the beneficial compounds found in cannabis (the R group) to act as antioxidants and neuroprotectants within the human body. Cannabidiol is designed and being engineered to provide all the benefits of organic cannabis without the psychoactive "high" associated with the drug. This will allow them to continue patenting their product while demonizing cannabis in the media and courts and keeping this pure and natural medicine illegal and unavailable.

Be sure to take the time to scroll down and read through this patent and you will discover what a miracle plant cannabis really is. You will be asking yourself... "What can't it do?" as application after application is described in great detail about the medicinal properties and natural treatment potentials of cannabis. Ask yourselves "Why are multinational corporations allowed to continually market dangerous and untested poisons, toxins and industrial waste products described as food additives and incorporate them into our processed food supply while you and I face arrest and incarceration for simply growing and selling organic foods and medicines?"

I have been healing people and their pets for over two years now using organic nutrients combined with THC Oil and the results are miraculous. Screw the FDA... CANNABIS CURES CANCER!

Run from the cure:

[link to www.youtube.com]

Cancer-Gate:
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]

Vitamin Cannabis:
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]
[link to www.youtube.com]

Assorted videos (select play all)
[link to www.youtube.com]

Cannabinoid Research:
[link to encrypted.google.com (secure)]

[link to www.dailypaul.com]

Innocent farmers being blamed for failure of Monsanto's frankencrops

So, if you're a farmer and your yields are consistently lower each year, it's your fault, right?

If you're using a Monsanto product, then the company would tell you yes, indeed it is your fault.

But what happens when Monsanto-designed Bt cotton in India, which is supposed to be resistant to the voracious bollworm, isn't? The company would step up and take responsibility then, of course. Right?

Wrong. In that case, it is still not Monsanto's fault. At least, that's what the company says.

That's because, according to the agri-business giant, some resistance to its creation is "natural and expected."

Huh?

Here's the story.

'Genetic farming is the easiest way to cultivate crops'

A decade ago, when they first began planting Bt cotton, Indian farmers were told the Monsanto creation was supposed to boost yields in part by keeping the bollworm at bay.

"Of all the GMO controversies around the world, the saga of Bt cotton in India continues to be one of the most interesting and important," the Center for Research on Globalization said in a recent report. "In the latest chapter...cotton yields have dropped to a five-year low, setting off a fascinating round of finger pointing."

Following India's approval of Bt cotton in 2002, yields initially were up dramatically, but they have begun to fall in recent years in part because the one pest the crop was designed to repel is becoming resistant.

That's not what Indian farmers were led to believe.

"I was there when Bt cotton was being rolled out and they were told repeatedly and confidently that they wouldn't have to spray anymore," the center's Glenn Davis Stone wrote. "In fact we were all being told that 'genetic farming is the easiest way to cultivate crops. All that farmers have to do is to plant the seeds and water them regularly. The genetically modified seeds are insect resistant, so there is no need to use huge amounts of pesticides.'"

"All the farmer has to do is plant and water the seeds... and then wait around for resistance, which is natural and expected. But wait there's more: when it does appear, it's the Indian farmers' fault," he writes.

A Monsanto spokesman, as reported by the Business Standard, explained:

Among the factors that may have contributed to pink bollworm resistance to the Cry1Ac protein in Gujarat are limited refuge planting and early use of unapproved Bt cotton seed, planted prior to GEAC approval of Cry1Ac cotton, which may have had lower Bt protein expression levels.

A refuge, Stone says, "is a strip of non-Bt seeds farmers are asked to plant around their Bt fields, basically to raise bollworms that aren't resistant to Bt, so they can hopefully breed with any resistant bollworms."

Few Indian farmers do this because, he says, it involves a lot of extra work for little return. But that's not their fault, notes Stone.

"Here's an insight from 30 years of research on farming: if you're pushing a technology that is only sustainable if farmers follow practices that require extra work for no return, you are pushing an unsustainable technology," he said.

He also debunks Monsanto's claim that the farmers are at fault because they planted unapproved seeds.

"Those unapproved seeds were Navbharat-151 and they have been much written about; they were better than the approved seeds, and their Bt levels were apparently sky high. Gujarat, where they were planted, has had India's biggest rises in yields," he says.

All the while, cotton yields continue to drop because of the Monsanto's defective product, the answer; the company says, is to simply plant more of the GM seed.

No, thanks.

The Business Standard reported that:

Continuous R&D and innovation to develop new value-added technologies is imperative to stay ahead of insect resistance. To support such innovation, Monsanto demanded government policies' support to encourage investment in R&D which will result in Indian farmers having a wider choice of better and advanced technologies translating thereby, higher yield.

"No kidding," Stone writes, "innovation from Monsanto is going to keep us ahead of the insects and guarantee higher yields," even as yields due to Monsanto's product have been dropping since the 2007-08 season.

"There you have it," he wrote. "Indian cotton farmers today are being pelted with a hailstorm of new gene technologies and seed products, their yields steadily dropping, and the way forward is clear to the Business Standard: invest in Monsanto innovation."

Increasingly, Indian farmers are saying, "No, thanks."

Source: Natural News

Friday, February 22, 2013

NYPD and Microsoft build hi-tech crime fighting 'dashboard'

Created by Microsoft and the New York Police Department, the Domain Awareness System, known as "the dashboard," is state-of-the-art crime fighting technology.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Greedy Monsanto pushes for complete domination of agriculture industry, desperately taking seed rights to Supreme Court

Not satisfied with being one of the world's dominant agri-business giants, Monsanto is taking its "seed rights" to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to gain complete domination of the world's agricultural production.

On Feb. 19, the nation's high court heard arguments in a case between Monsanto and Vernon Bowman, a 75-year-old Indiana farmer the agri-giant is suing over claims he has for years used seeds sown from a first crop of Monsanto Roundup Ready soybean seeds to grow subsequent crops.

Monsanto argues that Bowman's subsequent use of seeds violates the company's patent, noting that farmers sign an agreement when they buy the seeds to use them only one time. The resulting crop can later be sold off for things like feed or oil but not to create another generation of seeds, CNBC reported.

Monsanto - What's ours is ours

The agri-giant claims that reusing its seeds is much like stealing a copyrighted song or DVD. But Bowman and scores of other farmers believe that forcing them to buy new seeds every year is nothing more than a monopoly, and that Monsanto's patent should then "expire" after the first crop is grown.

So far, the federal courts have sided with Monsanto. A lower court agreed with the agri-giant but Bowman appealed, much to the chagrin of corporate America, which was surprised when the nation's highest court agreed to hear the case.

Monsanto says its multi-billion dollar seed industry is at stake. The company is dominant in the soybean market with its Roundup Ready-brand seeds, which the company has genetically modified so that farmers are able to spray week killer without damaging the soybeans (though a number of weeds are now becoming resistant to the Roundup Ready seeds).

The agri-giant says its GM seeds took years to develop and have helped farmers improve yields and keep costs down.

But how long should a company be compensated for something hard to create but easy to copy? That's what the high court will decide, and it's why there are other companies interested in how the high court will rule.

Filing amicus (friend of the court) briefs in support of the agri-giant is a broad array of industries, from the Business Software Association, which represents companies like Microsoft and Intel, to biotech firms and other soybean farmers who are worried that the prices of Monsanto seeds could skyrocket if it loses or that the company may scale back on its research and development.

A Monsanto loss "would effectively eliminate the incentive to discover and develop new genetically-engineers plants," the American Intellectual Property Law Association wrote in its brief.

But would that be so bad? And what about the fact that more U.S. farmers are moving away from GM seeds because of the development of "superweeds" that are resistant to Roundup?

"We're back to where we were 20 years ago," Tennessee farmer Eddie Anderson told The New York Times in April 2010, in response to why he had to return to using pesticides and plowing in order to deal with resistant weeds. "We're trying to find out what works."

'Darwinian evolution in fast-forward'

The first resistant weeds turned up in Delaware in 2000; the problem has only gotten worse since, with 10 resistant species growing in at least 22 states, infesting every crop from soybeans to cotton and corn.

"What we're talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward," Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, told the Times.

Then, of course, there is the fact that Monsanto recently spent millions to kill Prop. 37 in California, a measure that would have required labeling of GMO foods (http://www.naturalnews.com). This is the same agri-giant that once said there is no need to test GM foods because there is nothing wrong with them. (http://www.naturalnews.com)

Bowman may or may not win his case against Monsanto, but clearly the agri-giant is overstaying its welcome with farmers after years of litigating against them.

Sources:

Natural News

Ghost writer: New app to keep you tweeting after death

A new application will soon allow users to keep posting Twitter updates from beyond the grave, independently using intricate knowledge of your online character to create a virtual continuation of your personality after you die.

­“When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting,” says the new application’s tagline.

‘LivesOn’ will let users pursue ‘life after death’ on their social media profiles, letting the deceased communicate with loved ones. LivesOn will keep posting after you kick the bucket, following the example of the DeadSocial platform.

Due to be launched in March, the LivesOn application will keep tweeting after you pass on. The service will utilize advanced analysis of your main Twitter feed, to carefully select appropriate subjects, likes, or articles that would have been likely to interest you, posting them on your behalf for your friends to read.

Pre-existing applications so far have only allowed users to schedule prepared updates.

Users of LivesOn can even nominate an ‘executor’ to their LivesOn will, who will decide whether to keep the account ‘live’.

A similar application was recently seen in a UK television program named Black Mirror, which showed a bereaved woman speaking to a virtually-constructed version of her deceased husband, which was built from his previous online communications, despite him not having laid any plans to maintain social media communications after his death.

The application is cut from the same cloth as one launched last April, named DeadSocial, and another Israeli application which was launched in January 2102, named If I Die. However, whereas LivesOn will base its postings on pre-existing models of your behavior, these currently-active applications allow their deceased users to send messages from beyond the grave to private Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts

Source: WHPTV

EU Court to Decide if Hyperlinking is Copyright Infringement



In what seems like an absurd court case, the European Union Court of Justice is trying to decide if hyperlinking is copyright infringement. As crazy it may be, the outcome of this case could have wide implications for the Internet.

For those who think there's no way that the EU court could possibly rule that linking is copyright infringement, I'll remind you of when the Department of Homeland Security seized several websites in 2011 for merely linking to copyright-infringing websites. The DHS claimed that the sites linking in to pirate websites was also a form of "direct criminal copyright infringement".

The court case in Europe concerns a Swedish journalist who claims that a subscription news link service owes him money for linking to his article. The subscription company, Retriever Sverige AB, refused to pay and said "Merely linking to a copyright work and displaying the resulting content within a frame did not constitute infringement."

The exact wording of question posed to the court is, “If anyone other than the holder of copyright in a certain work supplies a clickable link to the work on his website, does that constitute communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society?”

In other words, do hyperlinks constitute a "communication to the public" that is protected by copyrights?

In a recently published paper presented to the court, the well-respected European Copyright Society (ECS) argues that it would be absurd to equate links with copyrighted communications,"If hyperlinking is regarded as communication to the public, all hyperlinks would need to be expressly licensed. In our view, that proposition is absurd.”

The ECS points out that hyperlinks are merely footnotes or references to the work of others which has always been permitted by copyright law.

"As Tim-Berners Lee, who is regularly accredited as being an inventor of the World Wide Web, has explained, a standard hyperlink is nothing more than a reference or footnote, and that the ability to refer to a document is a fundamental right of free speech," ECS emphasized.

The ECS also quoted law professor and author of Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age Jessica Litman who wrote "… the public has always had, and should have, a right to cite. Referring to a copyrighted work without authorization has been and should be legal. Referring to an infringing work is similarly legitimate … Drawing a map showing where an infringing object may be found or dropping a footnote that cites it invades no province the copyright owner is entitled to protect even if the object is blatantly pirated from a copyrighted work. Posting a hypertext link should be no different.”

They also issued a stern warning that regulating online linking would essentially destroy not only freedom of speech but also countless business ventures on the internet.

"The legal regulation of hyperlinking thus carries with it enormous capacity to interfere with the operation of the Internet, and therefore with access to information, freedom of expression, freedom to conduct business, as well – of course – with business ventures that depend on these types of linkages," they warned.

Who could argue with these statements by the ECS? Apparently only a greedy copyright troll can.

Virtually all websites are driven by hyperlinks. If the EU court was to rule that hyperlinks represent copyrighted communications that need to be licensed then Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Reddit and others would be put out of business immediately, and I seriously doubt that would be allowed to occur.

Stay tuned for the judgement in this case as it has huge implications for the Internet.

Note: This is the extent some copyright trolls are going to to challenge independent websites. If you have a blog that posts material from around the web, it's vital that you adhere to some basic copyright rules for aggregating content to avoid this type of absurd attack. Don't feed the trolls.

Source: Activist Post

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Fast Food Fight: “McDonald’s” Hacks Burger King’s Twitter Account

My guess is that Burger King’s password was “whopper” – any other guesses? From GigaOm:

Even by the standards of social media fiascos, this one’s a doozy. On Monday, Burger King’s official Twitter feed announced the chain had been sold to its rival and began posting pro-McDonald’s messages and tales of employee drug use.

The strange Twitter activity took place after hackers apparently took control of Burger King’s account and replaced its name and image with the McDonald’s logo. Here is a screenshot of what followers of @burgerking saw on Monday:

The blue checkmark beside the @burgerking name indicate that this is indeed Burger King’s official Twitter account. Other tweets included…

[continues at GigaOm]

Australian Politician Speaks Truth About Agenda 21

Horsemeat? GMOs and Food Toxins Are The Real Scandal

While the UK media becomes hysterical over the discovery of horsemeat in the food chain, RINF Alternative News takes a look at the real dangers of a handful of chemicals that are added to our food, which we consume everyday.

As you’d expect, this information goes unreported in the corporate media.


Sunday, February 17, 2013

How the Drug Companies Make Vaccines

Anti-GMO Polish Farmers Bravely Press on with Protest

protest_przed_polsk_ambasad

Polish Farmers Protest Against GMO Crops

Tractor Blockade Enters 10th Week

by Kimberly Hartke

Where is the International News coverage? Hello CNN?

A colorful and newsworthy tractor blockade protest is taking place all over Poland, and we have yet to see the news coverage here in the United States of America. By and large, Genetically Modified Organism news is scarce here. I believe we need more news coverage of the GMO controversy for two reasons. One, the U.S. populace knows very little about the health and economic impact of GMO crops, and two,  for those “in the know” it is a huge deal. Last years defeat of the California ballot initiative wouldn’t have happened if the general public was more educated about biotechnology and GMOs.

Last week, British artistocrat, Sir Julian Rose and a group of anti-GMO farmers continued their protest, against the attempted imposition of GM crops in both Poland and Britain. See his guest blog on Hartke is Online!: Polish Farmers Protest Sale of Land for GM Crops

If you want to know more about the health hazards of GMOs (genetically modified foods), see Jeffrey Smith’s Institute for Responsible Technology website.

Accompanied by Goldman Laureate Jadwiga Lopata and Polish citizens living in the UK, he delivered a ‘letter of support’ to the Polish Embassy for the attention of the Ambassador, Mr Witold Sobkow, saying:

“It is crucial that farmland should remain in the hands of genuine farmers and not sold-off to giant international corporate interests whose sole motives are profit and power. It’s in all our interests to stand in support of actions that resist the planting of transgenic laboratory foods that cannot be prevented from cross contaminating other crops.”

 

gmo-protest-poland

Poland, Once GMO Free Now Under EU Dictates to Add GMO Zones

The letter expressed solidarity with protesting Polish farmers who are staging extensive tractor blockading actions in five Provinces of Poland in support of their demands:

  • Stop the selling-off of Polish farmland to foreign multinational corporations.
  • Ban, by law, the planting and trading of GM crops on Polish soils.
  • Remove onerous regulations that inhibit and prohibit the sale of made on the farm produce in local shops.

Here is another blog by Julian explaining what’s at stake on the issue: Help Keep Poland GMO Free.  More photos of protest demonstration may be seen on the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) website

Poland-Farmer-GMO-Protest

Farmers Blockade an Agricultural Ministry with Tractors

What You Can Do to Help

  1. Send this blog post to any reporter you know in the mainstream media. Suggest they cover the issue, or refer it on to someone who will.
  2. Sir Julian asks you to write letters of support to encourage the farmers who have been protesting for over a month. This is the letter I wrote.

Dear Brave men and women:

I am writing to thank you for your campaign to preserve the Polish countryside and the “GMO FREE” status of your nation.
It is very important to the world community to highlight this important human health and farming issue.

Please know that food activists in America care and are with you in spirit!

Regards, Kimberly Hartke

Please send your letter of support to julian (at) icppc.pl

And, 3. Look for the GMO free label! If we won’t buy it, they’ll quit planting it!

MORE

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Stop CISPA: The Internet Spying Bill is Back in Congress

If at first you don’t succeed in implementing total state surveillance on your citizenry, try and try again.  These guys are just unbelievable.  From the EFF:

It’s official: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives yesterday. CISPA is the contentious bill civil liberties advocates fought last year, which would provide a poorly-defined “cybersecurity” exception to existing privacy law. CISPA offers broad immunities to companies who choose to share data with government agencies (including the private communications of users) in the name of cybersecurity. It also creates avenues for companies to share data with any federal agencies, including military intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA).

As others have noted, “CISPA is deeply flawed. Under a broad cybersecurity umbrella, it permits companies to share user communications directly with the super secret NSA and permits the NSA to use that information for non-cybersecurity reasons. This risks turning the cybersecurity program into a back door intelligence surveillance program run by a military entity with little transparency or public accountability.”

The EFF sums up its most pressing concerns in the following bullet points:

1) Companies have new rights to monitor user actions and share data—including potentially sensitive user data—with the government without a warrant.

2) CISPA overrides existing privacy law, and grants broad immunities to participating companies.

3) CISPA also raises major transparency and accountability issues.

4) Users probably won’t know if their private data is compromised under CISPA, and will have little recourse.

Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg

Tweet Twit: Govt stores messages to create life snapshot?

There are now close to two-hundred billion tweets stored in databases at the library of congress in the US The government says it wants to keep a snapshot of life in the country seen through online messages.

800 more children permanently harmed by vaccines

More evidence has emerged showing that the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) vaccine Pandemrix, which was widely administered throughout Europe during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza "pandemic," was responsible for causing serious and permanent side effects in many of the children that received it. At least 800 children, it turns out, many of whom live in Sweden, now have narcolepsy because of the vaccine, and some government officials are demanding answers.

As we reported back in March 2012, a study published in the journal Public Library of Science ONE found that cases of narcolepsy, an incurable sleeping disorder that can cause hallucinations, nightmares, and even paralysis, skyrocketed by about 1,700 percent in children and teenagers under the age of 17 following the widespread administration of Pandemrix. Scientists determined at the time that mass vaccination campaigns for Pandemrix were directly associated with this otherwise inexplicable spike in cases of narcolepsy.

Now, researchers have all but confirmed without a doubt that Pandemrix was, indeed, responsible for triggering the autoimmune disorder in a significantly higher percentage of the population than normal. Even Emmanuel Mignot, one of the world's leading experts on narcolepsy who is currently being funded by GSK to get to the bottom of the issue, explained to reporters that there is "no doubt in [his] mind whatsoever" that Pandemrix is directly responsible for causing the increase in narcolepsy cases among European children.

"This is a medical tragedy," added Goran Stiernstedt, a public health official from Stockholm, Sweden, about the wave of vaccine-induced narcolepsy in his country. Roughly five million Swedes were vaccinated for H1N1 during the 2009-2010 "pandemic," and yet as few as 30 people among these are estimated to have been saved from swine flu death as a result of the shot. Meanwhile, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have since been reported and confirmed throughout the Scandinavian country. "Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed."

Following the initial release of reports linking Pandemrix to narcolepsy, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) quickly blocked the vaccine from being further administered to individuals under the age of 20. But the damage has already been done among those who have been confirmed to be vaccine-damaged as a result of Pandemrix. And unless the vaccine is completely banned among all age groups, further reports of permanent vaccine damage could emerge in the coming months and years.

Back in 2011, a GSK subsidiary pleaded guilty to marketing medicines and vaccines that were known to be contaminated with bacteria. A tip from a company whistleblower triggered a federal investigation that exposed the GSK company for deliberately contaminating products in order to cut costs, and carelessly manufacturing some of its drugs with bacteria-contaminated water.

Source: Natural News

Big Brother, Big Business

‘Big Brother, Big Business’ is a special report wherein CNBC takes a look at the companies behind the powerful business of personal information and the people whose lives are affected by it.

It reveals how every day technologies are being used to monitor Americans with unique scrutiny – from driving habits to workplace surveillance; shoppers and diners are observed and analyzed; internet searches are monitored and used as evidence in court, and it is the big businesses that collect most of the data. But increasingly, it’s the government that’s using it.

It gives examples of unsuspecting vulnerable citizens who get caught up in the net, such as a woman who lost her job due to mistaken identity; a man whose cell phone records were stolen by his former employer; a woman whose personal information was stolen from a company she had never heard of; a man who discovered his rental car company was tracking his every move.

The documentary also looks at how identities are being established using biometric means by the FBI, the Border Patrol, police departments and schools and also details of how an AOL division is established that works solely to satisfy the requests of law enforcement for information about AOL’s members.

Refusing Smart Meters to Protect Your Health and Privacy

Smart meters are being deployed by electric companies worldwide, replacing old, yet functioning analog meters, because it gives them a way to interact with the homes of their customers, monitor electricity consumption, and offer “smart home” control and functionality. Oh, and let’s not forget that they also save money. At least this the big sales pitch they are giving us.

By providing detailed information about the energy usage in your home, smart meters can alert you if your new smart refrigerator suddenly becomes an electricity hog and needs to be serviced, if your kids had a party when you were off on a business trip, or if you forgot to turn off your smart stove before you left for work.

Goodbye Privacy – Hello Big Brother

Depending on the functionality of the meter, the smart meter may be able to track how much electricity is used within each room of the home, as well as how much is used by the various new smart appliances in your house. Just as the smart meters can communicate wirelessly with devices such as TV sets or tablets to show you your electrical consumption, they also communicate this information with the power company, which keeps records about the volumes and patterns associated with your daily life.

Below is a video that explores the privacy implications of this data exchange.

With this information, whoever has access to the data can get a pretty clear picture of your life: how much time you spend out of the house and at what time of the day; when you watch TV the most; when you are on vacation; if it looks like you’re running a business out of your home; and so forth. The implications for personal surveillance are staggering.



Governments, law enforcement agencies, and even companies will be able to access the data housed by the electric company (which the government is already doing to enforce business licenses). The implications are even more serious considering that such intimate personal data about your daily life can be easily intercepted by hackers as it is broadcast over the radio waves.

Electromagnetic Radiation and Your Health

This short video that shows a resident measuring the radio signals sent from the smart meter using microwave radiation. This man decided to make this video because within 3-months of the installation of a new smart meter, the shrubbery around the smart meter mysteriously died, although it thrived around the old electrical meter without any problems and continues to thrive a certain distance beyond the meter.



Advocates of smart meters will tell you that the wireless radiation emitted by these devices is within “safe levels,” often referencing ‘decades of research,’ much of which has been funded by the companies that make the smart meters. Unfortunately, many are beginning to suffer with insomnia, headaches and other illnesses after the installation of a smart meter.

In May of 2011, the World Health Organization official recognized that wireless radiation such as emitted by “smart meters” is a possible carcinogen. – source

Read more: Smart Meter and Electromagnetic Radiation: Another Health Crisis Of Our Time

What Can You Do?

Are you going to allow the power company to install a radiation-emitting surveillance device on your home?

Here’s an interview with a woman from Illinois that refused to have one installed on her house, informed the electric company of her decision by writing, yet was eventually arrested when the police and electric company crew came once again to install the meter on her house.



Power companies will typically install these devices on your home based on “implied consent” unless you make it clear that you do not grant permission for them to switch out your old meter or add any new device to your home. Some utilities companies, for example PG&E in California, are charging “opt-out” fees of customers refusing the smart meters, in an attempt to dissuade people from opting out as well as to cover “the cost of paying workers to read the analog meters each month.” (source)

The opposition to smart meters is growing everyday as more people learn about the sinister implications of these devices.

In Texas, Republican Senator Dennis Bonnen has threatened to draft legislation that would allow all residents to opt-out from the Public Utility Commission’s smart meter’s initiative.

The first step to refusing a smart meter is informing your utilities company by certified letter that you do not grant permission for them to install a smart meter on your home due to concerns about health and privacy.

Sure, the concept of having more control over your home appliances may sound cool to some, but. Yet are you willing to throw away your privacy and jeopardize your health for just some cool smart home features that you’ve been able to live without until now?

Source: Activist Post

Friday, February 15, 2013

Giving Up The Green Bitch: Graham Hancock’s TEDx Talk

Following publication of his extraordinary essay, ‘Giving up the Green Bitch: Reflections on Cannabis, Ayahuasca and the Mystery of Plant Teachers’, Graham Hancock gives a captivating TEDx talk about his Ayahuasca experiences and overcoming his addiction to marijuana:

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Meteorite crash in Russia: UFO fears spark panic in the Urals (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteorite shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cellphones have stopped working.

According to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement near Chelyabinsk. A missile salvo reportedly blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers.

­A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from space objects such as asteroids or comets, ranging in size from tiny to gigantic.

When a meteorite falls on Earth, passing through the atmosphere causes it to heat up and emit a trail of light, forming a fireball known as a meteor, or shooting or falling star.

A bright flash was seen in the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Sverdlovsk regions, Russia’s Republic of Bashkiria and in northern Kazakhstan.

Lifenews tabloid said that at least one piece of the fallen object caused damage on the ground in Chelyabinsk. According to preliminary reports, it crashed into a wall near a zinc factory, disrupting the city's Internet and mobile service.

The Emergency Ministry reported that 20,000 rescue workers are operating in the region. Three aircraft were deployed to survey the area and locate other possible impact locations.

Witnesses said the explosion was so loud that it seemed like an earthquake and thunder had struck at the same time, and that there were huge trails of smoke across the sky. Others reported seeing burning objects fall to earth.

Meteorite shook Chelyabinsk this morning. Shook my whole building and woke me up!#челябинск youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxXYs…

— Michael Garnett (@MichaelGarnett) February 15, 2013

Police in the Chelyabinsk region are reportedly on high alert, and have begun ‘Operation Fortress’ in order to protect vital infrastructure.

Office buildings in downtown Chelyabinsk are being evacuated. Injuries were reported at one of the city’s secondary schools, supposedly from smashed windows. No other injuries have been reported so far.

An emergency message published on the website of the Chelyabinsk regional authority urged residents to pick up their children from school and remain at home if possible.

Up to 100 people sought medical attention as a result of the incident, according to the Russian Interior Ministry. No serious injuries have been reported, with most of the injuries caused by broken glass and minor concussions.

Background radiation levels in Chelyabinsk remain unchanged, the Emergency Ministry reported.

Photo from Twitter.com user @TimurKhorev
Photo from Twitter.com user @TimurKhorev Screenshot from YouTube user Gregor Grimm
Screenshot from YouTube user Gregor Grimm

The regional Emergency Ministry said the phenomenon was a meteorite shower, but locals have speculated that it was a military fighter jet crash or a missile explosion.

“According to preliminary data, the flashes seen over the Urals were caused by [a] meteorite shower," the Emergency Ministry told Itar-Tass news agency.

The ministry also said that no local power stations or civil aircraft were damaged by the meteorite shower, and that “all flights proceed according to schedule.”

Residents of the town of Emanzhilinsk, some 50 kilometers from Chelyabinsk, said they saw a flying object that suddenly burst into flames, broke apart and fell to earth, and that a black cloud had been seen hanging above the town. Witnesses in Chelyabinsk said the city’s air smells like gunpowder.

Screenshot from YouTube user Gregor Grimm
Screenshot from YouTube user Gregor Grimm

Residents across the Urals region were informed about the incident through a cellphone text message from the regional Emergency Ministry.

Many locals reported that the explosion rattled their houses and smashed windows. 

“This explosion, my ears popped, windows were smashed… phone doesn’t work,”

Evgeniya Gabun wrote on Twitter.

“My window smashed, I am all shaking! Everybody says that a plane crashed,” Twitter user Katya Grechannikova reported.

“My windows were not smashed, but I first thought that my house is being dismantled, then I thought it was a UFO, and my eventual thought was an earthquake,” Bukreeva Olga wrote on Twitter.

The Mayak nuclear complex near the town of Ozersk was not affected by the incident, according to reports. Mayak, one of the world’s biggest nuclear facilities that used to house plutonium production reactors and a reprocessing plant, is located 72 kilometers northwest of Chelyabinsk.

It is believed that the incident may be connected to asteroid 2012 DA14, which measures 45 to 95 meters in diameter and will be passing by Earth tonight at around 19:25 GMT at the record close range of 27,000 kilometers.

Photo from Twitter.com user @varlamov
Photo from Twitter.com user @varlamov

­

Another Tunguska event?


The incident in Chelyabinsk bears a strong resemblance to the 1908 Tunguska event – an exceptionally powerful explosion in Siberia believed to have been caused by a fragment of a comet or meteor.

According to estimates, the energy of the Tunguska blast may have been as high as 50 megatons of TNT, equal to a nuclear explosion. Some 80 million trees were leveled over a 2,000-square-kilometer area. The Tunguska blast remains one of the most mysterious events in history, prompting a wide array of hypotheses on its cause, including a black hole passing through Earth and the wreck of an alien spacecraft.

It is believed that if the Tunguska event had happened 4 hours later, due to the rotation of the Earth it would have completely destroyed the city of Vyborg and significantly damaged St. Petersburg.  

When a similar, though less powerful, unexplained explosion happened in Brazil in 1930, it was named the ‘Brazilian Tunguska.’ The Tunguska event also prompted debate and research into preventing or mitigating asteroid impacts.


Still from YouTube video/fed potapow
Still from YouTube video/fed potapow Still from YouTube video/fed potapow
Still from YouTube video/fed potapow Still from YouTube video/fed potapow
Still from YouTube video/fed potapow Still from YouTube video/fed potapow
Still from YouTube video/fed potapow Photo from Twitter.com user @znak_com
Photo from Twitter.com user @znak_com Photo from Twitter.com user @Frolov_kgn Alexander
Photo from Twitter.com user @Frolov_kgn Alexander Map

Intel's new TV box to point creepy spy camera at YOUR FACE

Intel has confirmed it will be selling a set-top box direct to the public later this year, along with a streaming TV service designed to watch you while you're watching it.

The device will come from Intel Media, a new group populated with staff nicked from Netflix/Apple/Google and so forth. Subscribers will get live and catch-up TV as well as on-demand content - all delivered direct from Intel over their broadband connections. It's a move which will put Chipzilla firmly into US living room, and no doubt ignite a host of privacy concerns from those who want to watch without being watched.

The announcement, made during an interview at the AllThingsD conference in California, isn't a great surprise; rumours of an Intel play have been swirling around for the last year and sure enough Erik Huggers (VP at Intel Media) admitted that the company has been working on the device, and associated service, for the last 12 months. He didn't say what the service will be called, but did say that the US isn't ready for entirely à la carte options and that Intel will be selling bundles of content - though we'll have to wait to see what they comprise.

More controversial is the plan to use a camera on the box to look outward, to identify the faces staring at the goggle box... telescreen-stylie. Intel will use that to present personalised options and targeted advertising, in a process which seems immediately creepy but might make sense to anyone who has tuned in to NetFlix to be told "Because you watched Power Rangers Ninja Storm..." We're used to being watched while we're web surfing, and those using Google Docs know the composition process contributes to their profile, but being watched on camera might be a step too far for some.

Huggers points out that the camera will have a physical shutter on the front, which can be closed, and that having the box recognise the viewers is simply easier than maintaining separate accounts, but Intel accepts that there's a public-relations challenge ahead.

Intel will be embracing the H.265 codec, recently developed and just approved by the ITU, which should provide better video over less bandwidth, but will make getting support across devices a challenge.

Huggers made much of his experience at the BBC: "I built this thing called iPlayer in the UK, and we made that service available to more than 650 devices", citing the broad platform support as essential to the success of iPlayer (which he describes as "catch-up TV done properly") and promising that Intel's service will also get broad support.

Whether the Android and iOS clients will feature the watching-you-watching-them tech, patented by Intel last year, we don't know, but the entry of Intel into the market is significant not only to shake up on-demand TV but also to ensure a future for the chip manufacturer as a provider of on-demand television - a business safe from the ARM-based competitors. ®

Source: The Register

Pentagon Inks Deal for Smartphone Tool That Scans Your Face, Eyes, Thumbs

California-based AOptix landed a deal with the Defense Department for its biometrics identification system that loads onto a smartphone (shown here as a hardware mock-up). Photo: AOptix

In a few years, the soldier, marine or special operator out on patrol might be able to record the facial features or iris signature of a suspicious person all from his or her smartphone — and at a distance, too.

The Defense Department has awarded a $3 million research contract to California-based AOptix to examine its “Smart Mobile Identity” biometrics identification package, Danger Room has learned. At the end of two years of research to validate the concepts of what the company built, AOptix will provide the Defense Department with a hardware peripheral and software suite that turns a commercially available smartphone into a device that scans and transmits data from someone’s eyes, face, thumbs and voice.

“They’ve asked us, based on what they’ve seen of our product, to work on some more specific needs and requirements for DoD,” Chuck Yort, AOptix’s vice president for identity solutions, tells Danger Room. Data security for the system will be provided by partner CACI International, which shares in the $3 million contract, which will be officially announced Wednesday morning.

Currently, U.S. troops rely on a single-use device, known as the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection System (HIIDE), to scan, upload and transmit data from someone’s facial, eye or thumb features to its wartime biometrics databases. The HIIDE, shown below, looks a bit like the camera Hipstamatic uses for its logo, and troops who want to operate it need to bring it close to the faces and thumbs of the people they scan.

A soldier in Iraq scans an Iraqi policeman’s eye using a cumbersome, viewfinder-like mobile system in 2009. The Pentagon just inked a deal with a California company that thinks it’s got a better way. Photo: U.S. Army

The hardware AOptix has developed isn’t itself a phone. It’s a peripheral that wraps around a phone to enable the additional sensing capabilities necessary to acquire the biometric data. AOptix was hesitant to describe the peripheral, but supposedly it won’t impact the phone’s form factor, and the company swears a smartphone bulked up with its sensing dongle will weigh under a pound. Unlike HIIDE, it’ll only take one hand to operate.

Outside of the add-on, the computational power of the smartphone is supposed to enable the software package that AOptix built — and displayed at a September conference in Tampa partially sponsored by the National Security Agency. The company won’t say what operating system Smart Mobile Identity it’s configured to run on, but the Defense Department tends to like the relative cheapness and open architecture of Android devices. Yort promises the software will have a “very intuitive interface that leverages smartphone conventions.”

Smart Mobile Identity has limited ability to record biometric data at a distance, but its specs outperform the HIIDE camera. It scans faces at up to two meters away, irises from one meter, and voice from within the typical distance from a phone. Thumbprints will still require a finger against the reinforced glass face of the phone. Joey Pritikin, another AOptix executive, says that an additional advantage of the system is its ability to capture an iris in bright sunlight, which is a challenge for HIIDE and other biometrics device. Apparently the system will also be able to snap an image of someone’s face or eye once the phone running the software focuses on it, without a specific click, swipe or press.

AOptix is also cagey about which part of the Defense Department inked the deal with the company. (Pentagon officials didn’t respond to requests for additional information.) But since AOptix and CACI are supposed to deliver Smart Mobile Identity after 24 months of research, its most likely application would be for special operations forces, who after the 2014 completion of the troop drawdown from Afghanistan will be doing the majority of patrolling in places where biometric ID collection on a mobile device will be relevant.

It’s worth noting that even though the military is backing away from foot patrols in warzones, it’s not backing away from biometric data acquisition — far from it. The U.S. Central Command has held on to the biometric database of three million people it compiled during the Iraq war. And Darpa-funded projects are already working on biometric identifier devices that can scan irises and even fingerprints from further distances than Smart Mobile Identity — to say nothing of next-gen biometrics projects that can scan thearea around your eye, your odor, and even the way you walk.

It’ll be a very long time before any of those detection systems can run on a phone, however. And even with the Defense Department’s budget crunch, the Army and now the Navy are showing interest in equipping their troops with smartphone and smartphone-like devices. Enabling them to scan someone’s physical features with the same device may not be a step too far.

Source: Wired

The World is Going to Change

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Tunisia’s Unfinished Revolution: From Dictatorship to Democracy?

On January 14, 2011, Tunisia’s 23-year long dictator Ben Ali fled the country he ruled over in the face of a popular uprising which began the previous month. Tunisia represented the spark of what became known as the ‘Arab Spring.’ Over two years later, Tunisians are back in the streets protesting against the new government, elected in October of 2011, now on the verge of collapse as ministers resign, protests increase, clashes erupt, violence flares, and the future remains unknown.

So the question lingers: what went wrong? What happened? Why are Tunisians back in the streets? Is this Tunisia’s “unfinished revolution”?

The Spark

Tunisia had been ruled by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from 1987 until the revolution in 2011, a regime marred by corruption, despotism, and repression. While the revolution itself is generally traced to the self immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year old street vendor in the city of Sidi Bouzid, on December 17, 2010, leading to protests and clashes which spread across the country, there was a longer timeline – and other profound changes – which led to the actual revolutionary potential.

Tunisia’s revolution was largely driven by economic reasons, though political and social issues should not be underestimated. Tunisia has a recent history of labour unrest in the country, with the General Union of Tunisian Workers – UGTT – having led protests which were violently repressed in 1978, bread riots in 1984, and more labour unrest in the mining region of Gafsa in 2008. There were also a number of political clashes from the 1990s onward, between the state and the Islamic movement an-Nahda (Ennahda). After the UGTT was repressed in 1978, it was permitted to exist in co-operation with the state, following along the lines of labour and union history within the West itself. While the state felt it had a firm control of Tunisian society, there were growing divides with the youth, who for years would lead their own protests against the state through human rights organizations, the General Union of Tunisian Students (UGET), or other associations.[1]

Within Tunisia, a crisis had emerged among young graduates in higher education from the mid-1990s onward, with a serious lack of employment opportunities for an increasingly educated youth. From this period up until the revolution, most protests in Tunisia were organized by youth in university organizations and student unions, using tactics such as sit-ins, chaining themselves to buildings, or hunger strikes, which were often met with state violence. Suicide had become another tactic of protest, “a political manifesto to highlight a political demand and to underline the social fragility it implies,” in the words of Mehdi Mabrouk from the University of Tunis. This was understood as the “emergence of a culture of suicide,” identified in a study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as “a culture which disdained the value of life, finding death an easier alternative because of a lack of values and a sense of anomie,” which was “particularly true of unemployed and marginal youth, so that death was more attractive than life under such conditions.”[2] It was within this context that Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicide became the spark for the wider protests, first in Sidi Bouzid, and quickly spreading across the country, with youth leading the way.

With the help of social media, like Facebook and Twitter, the youth activists in Sidi Bouzid were able to share their revolt with the rest of the country and the world, encouraging the spread of the uprising across Tunisia and the Arab world at large. A relative of Bouazizi described the protesters as having “a rock in one hand, a cell phone in the other.” Thus, while Tunisian media ignored the protests in Sidi Bouzid, international media and social media became increasingly involved. Tunisia had 3.6 million internet users, roughly a third of the population, who had access to live news about what was taking place within their country, even though the official national news media did not mention the events until 29 December 2010, twelve days after the protests had begun. The government began to arrest bloggers and web activists in the hopes that the protests would fade or diminish in fear, yet it only motivated the protests further. From the first day, the Sidi Bouzid branch of the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) was engaged in the protests, while the national leadership of the UGTT was considered to be too close to the regime and national ruling class to act independently. However, the regional branches of the UGTT had “a reputation for gutsy engagement,” wrote Yasmine Ryan in Al-Jazeera. The Sidi Bouzid branch of UGTT was one of the main organizing forces behind the protests, and when protesters were killed in neighbouring regions, it erupted nation-wide. Thus, students, teachers, lawyers, and the unemployed joined together in protest first in Sidi Bouzid, and then across the country.[3]


Read more: Boiling Frogs Post

Legality questioned as secretive ‘Stingray’ cell phone surveillance tool used more frequently

Questions about the legality of the secretive cell phone surveillance tool known as “Stingray” are being raised as the use of the device, originally billed as a counterterrorism tool, expands into everything but cases related to terrorism.

Unfortunately this is just one of many methods of surveillanceall of which are increasing dramatically – used by the government, law enforcement and even the private sector.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called Stingrays “the biggest technological threat to cell phone privacy you don’t know about” and “an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet” in October of last year and unfortunately it has only become more important since then.

The Stingray essentially dupes cell phones into treating the device as if it were a real cell phone tower, thus allowing “the government to electronically search large areas for a particular cell phone’s signal—sucking down data on potentially thousands of innocent people along the way,” as the EFF puts it.

Read more »

Monday, February 11, 2013

Driverless Cars Will Make Intersections So Efficient It's Scary

Driverless cars may be coming sooner than expected.

With companies like Google and Audi already working on ways to make our vehicles more autonomous and safe, we're left wondering what the future will look like once every car has that ability.

Today we found a simulation via The Atlantic Cities that answers how a four-way intersection could work in an era of driverless cars.

...driverless cars will make intersections much more efficient. Right now, you may wind up sitting at a red light for 45 seconds even though no one is passing through the green light in the opposite direction.

But you don’t have to do that in a world where traffic flows according to computer communication instead of the systems that have been built with human behavior in mind.

The cars zoom and twist through the intersection, miraculously avoiding each other. While it seems quite scar,y there is much more to consider than red lights, green lights, and stop signs when computers are in control.

Source: Business Insider