NSA could have accessed Google, Yahoo data through private cable provider

Reuters/Kacper Pempel

A new analysis of the National Security Agency’s covert eavesdropping operations suggests the private American company that supplies the likes of Google and Yahoo with fiber optic cables might have allowed the NSA to infiltrate those networks.

Reporters at the New York Times wrote this week that Level 3 Communications — the Colorado-based internet company that manages online traffic for much of North America, Latin America and Europe — is likely responsible for letting the NSA and its British counterpart silently collect troves of sensitive data from the biggest firms on the web.

Last month, top-secret leaked documents released to the media by former intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed efforts by the NSA to intercept web traffic going between data centers owned by big companies in an unencrypted state. A Washington Post report from late October attributes those Snowden leaks as saying that the NSA was receiving millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks and transferring that information to a facility at the agency’s Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters – all in spite of previously leaked documents which detailed how those companies and others had been providing the NSA with front-door access as part of the agency’s PRISM operation.

Nevertheless, the Post reported last month that “From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.” Data stored within those facilities is highly secure and encrypted, but not while in transit on cables primarily owned by Level 3.

Nearly one month later, an article published this Monday by Nicole Perlroth and John Markoff at the Times says those interception points could have been approved by Level 3, who owns the cable infrastructure that the majority of America’s web traffic travels through.

“People knowledgeable about Google and Yahoo’s infrastructure say they believe that government spies bypassed the big Internet companies and hit them at a weak spot — the fiber-optic cables that connect data centers around the world that are owned by companies like Verizon Communications, the BT Group, the Vodafone Group and Level 3 Communications,” Perlroth and Markoff wrote. “In particular, fingers have been pointed at Level 3, the world’s largest so-called Internet backbone provider, whose cables are used by Google and Yahoo.”

“It is impossible to say for certain how the NSA managed to get Google and Yahoo’s data without the companies’ knowledge,” the Times article continued, “But both companies, in response to concerns over those vulnerabilities, recently said they were now encrypting data that runs on the cables between their data centers.”

Through the NSA’s PRISM operation first disclosed by Mr Snowden in June, the government is alleged to have “upstream” access to data that non-US persons send through the servers of major internet companies, even compensating those firms in order to ensure they’re fully compliant with the feds’ requests. When word of a backdoor operation targeting those same PRISM-partners was disclosed last month, Google said at the time, “We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform.”

If the latest analysis in the Times proves to be correct, the lengths that the NSA and its British counterpart have gone to wouldn’t necessarily be considered all that outrageous. In fact, those agencies could have been obtaining access from Level 3 perhaps with just a contract.

Reached by the Times for comment, Level 3 said, “It is our policy and our practice to comply with laws in every country where we operate, and to provide government agencies access to customer data only when we are compelled to do so by the laws in the country where the data is located.”

In a financial report made by the company and obtained by the paper, however, Level 3 is revealed to have much more of a relationship with the government then one that just involves the occasional compliance order. According to that report, the company announced, “We are party to an agreement with the US Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense addressing the US government’s national security and law enforcement concerns. This agreement imposes significant requirements on us related to information storage and management; traffic management; physical, logical and network security arrangements; personnel screening and training and other matters.”

When news of the eavesdropping operation surfaced last month, Christopher Soghoian, a technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, speculated on Twitter that if Level 3 indeed allowed the government to tap its cables, they’d likely not be covered by the same legal protections in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that let feds conduct widespread surveillance over private companies’ data.

If Level 3 voluntarily let NSA/GCHQ tap Google's data, the immunity available via FISA 702 orders won't apply and they can be sued.

— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) October 31, 2013

Neither Google nor Yahoo have publicly commented on the suggestion that Level 3 compromised their networks’ data, nor have they indicated any willingness to file suit.

Source: RT

Amazing Footage of the Sun Igniting Comet ISON

Microsoft Denies Monitoring Skype Calls After Banning Users For Bad Language

Company suspends accounts of foul-mouthed Xbox gamers

After it was revealed that Microsoft was suspending the Skype accounts of Xbox gamers who used bad language, the company was forced to deny that it was monitoring Skype conversations.

Image: Microsoft (Wikimedia Commons).

Xbox users complained that Microsoft was banning them from using Skype or the Xbox Upload Studio because of “past behavior.” The censorship stemmed from the company targeting people who used bad language in their uploaded videos.

“Kinect likes to listen to you. It’s a big part of the console’s appeal. But it doesn’t like to hear your swears. At least not in Upload Studio, the Xbox One service that lets you share gameplay clips (with non-profane voiceover!) with friends, and save those clips to your SkyDrive. If you’ve got a dirty mouth, you can run into trouble,” reports Gizmodo.

Some Xbox users expressed concern at why Microsoft was applying the ban to Skype accounts when accessed via the Xbox console, leading to fears that the company was monitoring their private conversations, prompting a statement from Microsoft;

“To be clear, the Xbox Live Policy & Enforcement team does not monitor direct peer-to-peer communications like Skype chats and calls. Also, we take Code of Conduct moderation via Upload Studio very seriously. We want a clean, safe and fun environment for all users. Excessive profanity as well as other Code of Conduct violations will be enforced upon and result in suspension of some or all privileges on Xbox Live. We remain committed to preserving and promoting a safe, secure and enjoyable experience for all of our Xbox Live members.”

However, a respondent to the Gizmodo article points out that one of the bans was applied for someone solely using Skype, remarking, “So yes they are listening, or someone complained about the persons behavior.”

In suspending people for using bad language in video uploads, Microsoft is imposing censorship well beyond the likes of YouTube, which does not even age-restrict videos that contain swearing.

Although Microsoft is moving towards encrypting all its Internet traffic due to “suspicions that the NSA is intercepting traffic within its private networks,” the company was deeply embroiled in the NSA wiretapping scandal, allowing the snooping agency backdoor access to spy on users of its services.

In May it emerged that Microsoft “regularly scans (Skype) message contents for signs of fraud.” As the Edward Snowden leaks confirmed, Skype audio conversations “can be wiretapped by American intelligence agencies,” despite previously having been considered resistant to interception.

As we reported last week, Microsoft also denied claims that the new Xbox One’s Kinect camera could see gamers’ genitals after video footage emerged which suggested the device’s IR camera was so sophisticated that it could capture the outline of a user’s penis.

The Xbox One’s array of microphones and video cameras can distinguish between six different voices in a room while responding to voice commands and reading skeletal and muscular movements. The device can even tell if someone is looking at or away from the television.

InfoWars

Neurosurgeon Explains How You can Detox Chemtrail Poisons

Have you looked up into the chemtrail skies lately? These aerial sprayings are slowly making people sick with their puffy white chemical soup. Neurosurgeon, Dr. Russell Blaylock recently talked openly about chemtrails and what they are doing to our health, but also how to detox them on this video.

Whether the pilots on huge C130’s know what they are doing, or are practicing the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil tactics encouraged by our US military (commanded by a corrupt government) they are dumping all kinds of chemicals on us at an alarmingly increasing rate. (There are plenty of amazing service-people who have even been whistle-blowers on chemtrails) .

It doesn’t matter if you believe chemtrails are a ‘conspiracy theory,’ though even though the US government coined the term ‘chemtrails’ before any blogger ever did; people will still get sick from their existence. Dr. Blaylock warns we will see an increase in numerous diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, cancer, and upper-respiratory diseases just to name a few. But here is the good news – according to this particular neurosurgeon, you can help your body detox from some of the numerous chemicals in chemtrails (thorium, barium, mercury, aluminum oxide, and strontium).

Here is the list of things you can do to reduce the inflammatory response that is caused by some of these chemicals:

• Tocopherols in Vitamin E will help reduce inflammation in your brain and body, thus reducing the toxic effect of chemtrails. Almond milk is a great source of naturally occurring Vitamin E, as is

• Vitamin C, when added to Vitamin E, is a powerful protector of the brain, according to Dr. Blaylock.

• Curcumin binds with aluminum and helps to reduce its toxic effects, and supports its elimination from the body.

• Saffron is another great way to support brain health and detox these chemicals. It is also full of cancer-fighting carotenoids. In some studies, saffron has also shown to promote learning, memory and recall due to a compound in the plant called ‘crocin’.

• Flax seed has been shown to help reduce radiation poisoning and boost brain power as well.

• Cinnamon is full of antioxidants and can also reduce the inflammatory response in the body.

For further suggestions, you can watch the video, and start detoxing from chemtrails and their noxious poisons today.

Natural Society

Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance

“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.  ”Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.

Profits Before Populations

According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals). Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.

Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly used herbicides in the world. Glyphosate is an essential partner to the GMOs that are the principal business of the burgeoning biotech industry. Glyphosate is a “broad-spectrum” herbicide that destroys indiscriminately, not by killing unwanted plants directly but by tying up access to critical nutrients.

Because of the insidious way in which it works, it has been sold as a relatively benign replacement for the devastating earlier dioxin-based herbicides. But a barrage of experimental data has now shown glyphosate and the GMO foods incorporating it to pose serious dangers to health. Compounding the risk is the toxicity of “inert” ingredients used to make glyphosate more potent. Researchers have found, for example, that the surfactant POEA can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. But these risks have been conveniently ignored.

The widespread use of GMO foods and glyphosate herbicides helps explain the anomaly that the US spends over twice as much per capita on healthcare as the average developed country, yet it is rated far down the scale of the world’s healthiest populations. The World Health Organization has ranked the US LAST out of 17 developed nations for overall health.

Sixty to seventy percent of the foods in US supermarkets are now genetically modified. By contrast, in at least 26 other countries—including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia—GMOs are totally or partially banned; and significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward improving the health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought Fast Track status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to the healthcare crisis.

Roundup’s Insidious Effects

Roundup-resistant crops escape being killed by glyphosate, but they do not avoid absorbing it into their tissues. Herbicide-tolerant crops have substantially higher levels of herbicide residues than other crops. In fact, many countries have had to increase their legally allowable levels—by up to 50 times—in order to accommodate the introduction of GM crops. In the European Union, residues in foods are set to rise 100-150 times if a new proposal by Monsanto is approved. Meanwhile, herbicide-tolerant “super-weeds” have adapted to the chemical, requiring even more toxic doses and new toxic chemicals to kill the plant.

Human enzymes are affected by glyphosate just as plant enzymes are: the chemical blocks the uptake of manganese and other essential minerals. Without those minerals, we cannot properly metabolize our food. That helps explain the rampant epidemic of obesity in the United States. People eat and eat in an attempt to acquire the nutrients that are simply not available in their food.

According to researchers Samsell and Seneff in Biosemiotic Entropy: Disorder, Disease, and Mortality (April 2013):

Glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology . . . . Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

More than 40 diseases have been linked to glyphosate use, and more keep appearing. In September 2013, the National University of Rio Cuarto, Argentina, published research finding that glyphosate enhances the growth of fungi that produce aflatoxin B1, one of the most carcinogenic of substances. A doctor from Chaco, Argentina, told Associated Press, “We’ve gone from a pretty healthy population to one with a high rate of cancer, birth defects and illnesses seldom seen before.” Fungi growths have increased significantly in US corn crops.

Glyphosate has also done serious damage to the environment. According to an October 2012 report by the Institute of Science in Society:

Agribusiness claims that glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops will improve crop yields, increase farmers’ profits and benefit the environment by reducing pesticide use. Exactly the opposite is the case. . . . [T]he evidence indicates that glyphosate herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant crops have had wide-ranging detrimental effects, including glyphosate resistant super weeds, virulent plant (and new livestock) pathogens, reduced crop health and yield, harm to off-target species from insects to amphibians and livestock, as well as reduced soil fertility.

Politics Trumps Science

In light of these adverse findings, why have Washington and the European Commission continued to endorse glyphosate as safe? Critics point to lax regulations, heavy influence from corporate lobbyists, and a political agenda that has more to do with power and control than protecting the health of the people.

In the ground-breaking 2007 book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, William Engdahl states that global food control and depopulation became US strategic policy under Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger. Along with oil geopolitics, they were to be the new “solution” to the threats to US global power and continued US access to cheap raw materials from the developing world. In line with that agenda, the government has shown extreme partisanship in favor of the biotech agribusiness industry, opting for a system in which the industry “voluntarily” polices itself. Bio-engineered foods are treated as “natural food additives,” not needing any special testing.

Jeffrey M. Smith, Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, confirms that US Food and Drug Administration policy allows biotech companies to determine if their own foods are safe. Submission of data is completely voluntary. He concludes:

In the critical arena of food safety research, the biotech industry is without accountability, standards, or peer-review. They’ve got bad science down to a science.

Whether or not depopulation is an intentional part of the agenda, widespread use of GMO and glyphosate is having that result. The endocrine-disrupting properties of glyphosate have been linked to infertility, miscarriage, birth defects and arrested sexual development. In Russian experiments, animals fed GM soy were sterile by the third generation. Vast amounts of farmland soil are also being systematically ruined by the killing of beneficial microorganisms that allow plant roots to uptake soil nutrients.

In Gary Null’s eye-opening documentary Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs, Dr. Bruce Lipton warns, “We are leading the world into the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. . . . Human behavior is undermining the web of life.”

The TPP and International Corporate Control

As the devastating conclusions of these and other researchers awaken people globally to the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, transnational corporations are working feverishly with the Obama administration to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate activities. Negotiations have been kept secret from Congress but not from corporate advisors, 600 of whom have been consulted and know the details. According to Barbara Chicherio in Nation of Change:

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history. . . .

The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique.  If ratified the TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a barrier to their profits.

. . . They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.

Food safety is only one of many rights and protections liable to fall to this super-weapon of international corporate control. In an April 2013 interview on The Real News Network, Kevin Zeese called the TPP “NAFTA on steroids” and “a global corporate coup.” He warned:

No matter what issue you care about—whether its wages, jobs, protecting the environment . . . this issue is going to adversely affect it . . . .

If a country takes a step to try to regulate the financial industry or set up a public bank to represent the public interest, it can be sued . . . .

Return to Nature: Not Too Late

There is a safer, saner, more earth-friendly way to feed nations. While Monsanto and US regulators are forcing GM crops on American families, Russian families are showing what can be done with permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40% of Russia’s food was grown on dachas (cottage gardens or allotments). Dacha gardens produced over 80% of the country’s fruit and berries, over 66% of the vegetables, almost 80% of the potatoes and nearly 50% of the nation’s milk, much of it consumed raw. According to Vladimir Megre, author of the best-selling Ringing Cedars Series:

Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.

In the US, only about 0.6 percent of the total agricultural area is devoted to organic farming. This area needs to be vastly expanded if we are to avoid “the sixth mass extinction.” But first, we need to urge our representatives to stop Fast Track, vote no on the TPP, and pursue a global phase-out of glyphosate-based herbicides and GMO foods. Our health, our finances and our environment are at stake.

EllenBrown.com

Bitcoin Riches Spill Over to Alternative Digital Currencies

Bitcoin has been on an epic rush. Its recent spike in popularity caused respected exchanges like Coinbase to temporarily suspend trading because they literally ran out of Bitcoin to sell.

That was a week ago when the price of one Bitcoin was a mere $650. Today it flirts with $1000 and its market cap blew through the $10 billion mark yesterday. But the surge of government-issued money flowing into digital currencies doesn't stop with Bitcoin.

Almost all of the lesser known alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) experienced massive gains in the last few days, too. Look at the market caps the top cryptocurrencies below. Pay attention to the % Change and the graphs:

Source: CoinMarketCap.com

Most of these currencies like Litecoin, Anoncoin, Namecoin, Goldcoin, and 56 others on the multi-currency exchange Cryptsy.com, trade against Bitcoin.  Therefore, when they grow 3-4 fold against Bitcoin while itself gains in dollar value, the returns have become astronomical for altcoin daytraders.

Once you have some Bitcoin, Cryptsy makes it super easy to trade for other altcoins. I even managed to turn 2 bitcoins into 7 bitcoins there in a very short period.

One altcoin I got lucky with was Anoncoin (ANC). I bought some because it seemed unique compared to some of its peers. In the span of a few days it went from .0005BTC to .003BTC, a 500% gain against a currency (Bitcoin) that gained around another 25% at the same time. Look at its 1-month chart:

From Cryptsy

The video below by the Bitcoin Channel on YouTube explains the rise as overflow from people who don't want to sell their Bitcoin for fiat dollars. It seems they'd rather diversify them into the altcoins.



The Bitcoin gains of late feel different from April's bubble. It feels more like Bitcoin is starting to reach critical mass, globally.  And it seems its popularity spawned an entirely new asset class called cryptocurrencies to invest in.

It's tough to say what the future holds for Bitcoin or these other altcoins.  They may be purely speculative at the moment, However, strangely, I feel more secure holding them than I do with Federal Reserve Notes.

Source: Activist Post

Is your TV spying on YOU? It sounds like science fiction but many new TVs can watch you - telling advertisers your favourite shows or even filming you on the sofa. And there's no off switch!

You are sitting in bed in your pyjamas, drinking a cup of cocoa. A loved one lies next to you, watching late-night television. Pillow talk is exchanged. An alarm clock is set. Eventually the lights are turned out.

Earlier, you sat on the living-room sofa eating supper, before loading the dishwasher and heading upstairs.

You have, in other words, just enjoyed a perfectly normal night, in a perfectly normal home. The curtains are drawn, the central heating turned up. It’s cosy, relaxing and, above all, completely private. Or so you thought.

The truth turns out to be quite the opposite. For on the other side of the world, people you didn’t know existed are keeping a beady eye on your every move.

On the other side of the world, people you didn't know existed are keeping a beady eye on your every move

These characters can see what clothes you have been wearing and what food you’ve eaten. They heard every word you said, and logged every TV show you watched. Some are criminals, others work for major corporations. And now they know your most intimate secrets.

It may sound like a plot summary for a futuristic science-fiction movie. But real-life versions of this Orwellian scenario are being played out every day in towns and cities across the globe — and in most cases the victims have no idea.

At fault is a common electronic device invented nearly a century ago and found in almost every modern household: the domestic television set.

Put simply, our TVs have started spying on us.

 

More...

• Campaigners reveal horrific injuries they say were suffered by staff forced to work under terrible conditions in factories where Apple touchscreens are produced
• Cut off nuisance calls! Cold-calls are still getting through despite regulations designed to stop them

Last week, there was a high-profile case in point. An IT consultant called Jason Huntley, who lives in a village near Hull, uncovered evidence that a flat-screen television, which had been sitting in his living room since the summer, was secretly invading his family’s privacy.

He began investigating the £400 LG device after noticing that its home screen appeared to be showing him ‘targeted’ adverts — for cars, and Knorr stock cubes — based on programmes he’d just been watching.

Huntley decided to monitor information that the so-called smart TV — which connects to the internet — was sending and receiving. He did this by using his laptop effectively as a bridge between his television and the internet receiver, so the laptop was able to show all the data being sucked out of his set.

He soon discovered that details of not just every show he watched but every button he pressed on his remote control were being sent back to LG’s corporate headquarters  in South Korea.

Smart televisions, which connect to the internet, could be invading ordinary families' privacy (stock picture)

There, the electronics company appeared to be using its customers’ data to make money. A promotional video shown to commercial clients suggested that data was being used to provide ‘the ad experience you have always dreamed of’.

The information Huntley’s TV had sent — without his knowledge — included the contents of his private digital video collection, which he’d watched on the television. This included camcorder footage of family celebrations containing images of his wife and two young children.

Most worrying of all, the device continued sending such information to Korea even after Huntley had adjusted the television’s default settings to ‘opt out’ of data sharing.

Huntley wrote about the findings on his blog. After his case was picked up by mainstream news outlets, LG announced an investigation. ‘Customer privacy is a top priority,’ the firm said. ‘We are looking into reports that certain viewing information on LG smart TVs was shared without consent.’

LG has also removed its promotional video about targeted advertising from its website.

The Information Commissioner’s Office says it is now investigating the firm for a ‘possible breach’ of the Data Protection Act. Jason Huntley, meanwhile, tells me he is ‘very suspicious and also a little worried’ by the affair.

‘I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this. Who knows what else these televisions are doing that we don’t know about?’

It doesn’t take much digging to find out. Talk to any IT security expert and they will tell you that Huntley’s discovery is probably the tip of the iceberg.

What’s to blame is the continuing rise of smart televisions, which account for most new TV sets sold and are predicted to be in more than half of British homes by 2016. These high-tech devices differ from traditional televisions in that they are not just passive boxes that receive a signal and transfer it to a backlit screen.

Instead, they are essentially computers that connect to the internet — and so also send information back the other way.

In theory, this can be extremely useful. For example, many smart TVs have shopping ‘apps’ to access Amazon. They connect to iTunes. They allow us to watch YouTube, instantly download films via Netflix, stream BBC shows on iPlayer, and talk to friends using the video phone link Skype.

But in practice, like almost every type of computer, they can be all-too-easily hacked. And unlike PCs, almost all of which have fairly good anti-virus ‘firewalls’, smart TVs have little or no such software.
Indeed, most have been designed so that outside software — including anti-virus programmes — can never be installed.

This year, Luigi Auriemma, an IT security researcher and computer programmer from Malta, demonstrated the risks that these devices pose when he showed it was possible to hack into several types of Samsung smart television.

Last week, IT consultant Jason Huntley uncovered evidence that his LG flat-screen television, which had been sitting in his living room since the summer, was secretly invading his family's privacy

After accessing the devices via the internet, Auriemma was able to control them: turning the TVs off and on, and secretly accessing data they held about a user’s viewing habits.

Had he been a criminal, he could also have obtained details of the credit cards that users had uploaded to access pay-per-view TV, download films or use  shopping apps.

Other experts recently made the chilling discovery that it is possible to remotely access the video cameras built into the front of thousands of smart televisions, and spy on the users in their own home.

One such expert is Kurt Stammberger, who works for the IT security firm Mocana. He says the company was recently asked by a television manufacturer to do ‘penetration tests’ on its devices.
‘We weren’t just able to find out what someone was watching, and had watched,’ he says. ‘We could also install “spyware” that could, if they had a video camera, allow us to see through that camera — without even activating the little light that indicates it’s on.

‘It was a fairly straightforward thing to do. People who work in IT often place tape over their computer’s camera lens [in a laptop they are usually set into the inside of the lid] unless they want to actually use it, because it’s so common to hack them. We should all do the same with smart TVs.’

Such an attack, which Stammberger describes as ‘frighteningly easy’ to mount, could provide voyeuristic hackers with a chance to snoop on unsuspecting home-owners in their living rooms or bedrooms.

According to Roger Grimes, who has written eight books on IT security and worked in the field for 28 years, the gangs then sell lists of hacked credit card numbers to fellow criminals

You have only to witness the extraordinary success of the critically acclaimed Channel 4 show Gogglebox, in which consenting families allow the viewing public to watch them watching television, to appreciate how enticing that prospect could be.

More commercially minded hackers could use such an attack to steal commercial secrets. It could even be used to spy on foreign powers.

‘It’s a serious prospect and I would be very surprised if the Government ever puts in a big order for TVs from, for example, a Chinese manufacturer such as Huawei,’ adds Stammberger, referring to the giant corporation that has been banned in America because of fears over espionage.

‘But supply chains these days are so long and so complex that it’s very rare to buy an electronic device that doesn’t have some sort of Chinese component in it.’

Gangs based largely in Eastern Europe and Russia, meanwhile, are already using so-called ‘data-mining’ programmes to trawl the internet looking for smart TVs in which owners have entered their credit card details. A single search can yield thousands of results.

According to Roger Grimes, who has written eight books on IT security and worked in the field for 28 years, the gangs then sell lists of hacked credit card numbers to fellow criminals.

Card details that were obtained within the past 24 hours sell for around £2.20 each. Older ones are cheaper because there is more chance the cards could have been changed or stopped.

‘What we are starting to see now is really just a foretaste of what’s going to be happening in the next couple of decades,’ says Grimes.

‘Thanks firstly to mobile devices, and now smart TVs, we are entering a brave new world where there will be computers everywhere. Bad guys will take advantage of that.’

And we may not even be safe in our own living rooms.

link to www.dailymail.co.uk

Social Logins for Government Services Profile User's Identity

The current transition to electronic government (“e-gov”) means ditching all the paper + telephones + offices, and digitising everything, within the next few years. Driving licences, health records, prescriptions, taxes, benefits, voting, money … all of them will be digital. To access these services, each citizen must get a smart-chip to identify themselves to the government via an Identity Provider, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, LinkedIn or Microsoft.

The chip, called a secure element, can either be in a card, or a mobile phone, and you’ll have to hang onto it for dear life, because without it, your life would fall apart. This global smart ID is about to make its debut – using ‘social login’.



Apart from the surveillance involved using social logins, there will be a number of other chilling effects to follow – biometric enrolment, for starters, followed by relentless profiling in the name of predictive policing (aka NSA, GCHQ), and even digital clones used for simulations.

Mistrust will run amok. Always having to prove who you are, and what you’re allowed to do.

You could even be held responsible for maintaining our online profiles, meaning you’d be liable for what you claim about yourself, and for updating your details when your ID changes in any way. You will also have to pay to have your attributes (such as passing an exam) verified. People are already being advised to watch what they say online, but the global smart ID system would be able to restrict your access to certain resources if you are deemed to be illegible. This might soon happen to people on benefits – caught drinking, or smoking, their benefits might be stopped, for instance.

Without any public debate, it has been decided that you will pass control of your identity to one of the Identity Providers. It’s important to spread this information, because although the government insists it’s voluntary, there is no other option being presented for those who opt not to sign up. There aren’t any press releases, but this thing is happening right now. Offices and phone lines are being closed down. Even Bitcoin has gotten involved, as exchanges have begun using the very same ‘identity ecosystem’, and there are Bitcoin ATMs which require you to scan your palm print.

Any identity can be revoked, i.e. switched off.

The ultimate aim is to get us all using the same standards, which have been developed by the very same companies which stand to profit handsomely from this system.

OpenID, used for social logins for government services, “… is a standard that lets sites such as Google, Twitter or Facebook share the same login credentials. U.S. Government sites require a trust framework, a certification system that enables a party who accepts a digital identity credential to trust the identity, security and privacy policies of the party who issues the credential. OIX is the first Open Identity Trust Framework provider, enabling certified sites to share their login credentials with U.S. Government sites.” In 2010, Janrain was reportedly the only company to be, “working with the Apps.Gov site to provide OpenID-based login and registration tools.”

The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) was founded in 2010 by Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA and Booz Allen Hamilton, to create a “trust framework” of standards and certification which would work across borders, and between public and private sectors.



Your government wants you to click ‘sign in with Facebook’, (or some other identity provider) to begin a transaction with any of its departments. This ‘social login’ sets in motion a sweep of the Internet to track and trace your words and actions, and decide if you’re a real person. This process is known as “internet life verification”. Each of the IDPs are part of the federated identity ecosystem, which means they are all using the same global standards; it means handing control of your identity to a third party, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, PayPal, Microsoft, or LinkedIn. These are the dominant IDPs which provide citizens with a social (or federated) login.

Social login is the ability to access a web site or application using an account on a social network. You may have already used it, or at least seen the login buttons as an option on various sites' sign-in screens.

Some websites now have the ‘NASCAR logo’, which features the icons of the dominant Identity Providers (IDPs) listed above, (and maybe some others), and the option to sign in quickly using one of these social accounts is being offered by more and more websites and apps these days. Users may not realise that doing this would mean granting permission for their personal information to be gathered and analysed – every single time they sign in.

Over the next few years, more and more people all over the world will be using a smart phone, probably in combination with smart-rings or bracelets[1], to pay friends, and access buildings, using their NFC-enabled devices – simply verify yourself to your Identity Provider, and the IDP will do the rest for you. In the blink of an eye.



To understand what information can be gleaned from these IDPs, you gotta go here.Note that apps, etc, could get read/write access to people’s Facebook data, as well as that of their friends[2]. Security expert Dan Blum notes,

According to Janrain’s quarterly numbers and other sources, Facebook Login has almost 50% of the social login “market” and Google Plus (which is growing more rapidly) about 35%. Yahoo, Twitter and LinkedIn also register with smaller slices of the pie. Janrain notes: “Despite the possible perception that this is a two-horse race, it is critical to note the diversity of consumer preferences on different types of sites…We also have observed disparate preferences across geographic regions. For example, Hyves contends with Facebook as the most popular social network in the Netherlands…. In Brazil and India, Orkut is a popular identity provider for social login, while in China, Sina Weibo and Renren maintain popularity. Mixi is a common social login choice in Japan, while VK is preferred in Russia.

A recent ‘conversation’ amongst developers, about the clear progression of social logins, became a “bloodbath”, with comments such as:

…. I don’t like being tracked. 

…. Leaves trails. 

…. I don’t like you (consumers don’t like the companies asking for the data or sharing data). 

…. I don’t like spooks (can be accessed by the government/intelligence professionals, metadata creates patterns, companies are beholden to government requirements). 

…. I like Mozilla persona (just use that). 

…. You’re a single point of vulnerability. 

…. You’re a single point of blockage. 

…. Too much power to Facebook. 

…. What’s going on is that corps are collecting data on what the users are doing.

Also, at the Internet Identity Workshop last month (October, 2013), a long list of “user challenges with federated login” were recorded in the minutes from the meeting; for instance, it was noted that the Identity Provider has the, “ability to follow the user to where they go”, and that when a user builds up a “long term identity relationship, [they] may get greater access to services for having a quality account”, but users (who are said to have given permission to share their data) may not understand “what get’s shared”, and be “unclear on the potential use of the data”.

A great many problems are touched upon in the meeting:

• [users] must relinquish data to gain service benefits
• if something goes wrong, who are you going to call, the RP [the Relying Party] or the IDP
• if the user is faced with inability to access a paid service, who reimburses the user?
• we are habituating consent
• if you fail to share data, you fail authentication

Social/federated logins are said to make people’s lives easier, and said to make them more private. A couple of clicks and you’re in – after that, whenever you need to prove who you are, and what you have access to, just click on your IDP icon, and the IDP will do everything for you - it will pre-populate forms for you when you register with a site, and, whenever you need to prove who you are, for example, to buy a ticket, it would confirm to the website owner only those credentials which are required, such as name, date of birth, address, etc.

Although this prevents other websites from seeing your details, there are several companies who will gather it up for them, literally splattering personal info all over the place. Data is now considered an asset in itself, so the trade in identities will become an even more lucrative market.

The thing is, the identity profiles are created and owned by the Data Miners, and, when social profiles are combined with the credit history, and “other offline data” about that person, (such as call history and device ID, see below), the profiles are considered to provide substantial assurance that the person being presented is indeed who they say they are. Combined with behavioural biometrics, they also provide deep insights into an individual’s personality and lifestyle.

Sunil Madhu, CEO of Socure explains, “Peoples’ social behavior is something that is a part of who they are; a hard to replicate biometric signature. Socure’s Social Biometrics solution focuses on the strength of our social behaviors on different types of social networks as a way to assert the authenticity of a user’s identity online. When Socure’s machine learning algorithms are combined with traditional legacy identity verification software, you have a very formidable set of fraud detection tools.”

Marketers are eager for any information which will enable them to personalise their services, i.e. targeted ads. They really want to get to know their customers, as explained in a White Paper by Janrain, another social identity proofing company:

Marketers can gain a more sophisticated understanding of their consumers by leveraging the profile data that people already maintain on their social networks. Social profile data includes not only basic demographics such as name, age, gender, geography and email address, but also deeper psychographic information such as interests, marital status, political views, hobbies and friends. And because the profile information that users maintain on their social networks is transparent to friends, family and coworkers, it is more likely to be current and accurate than personal data that consumers may supply during a traditional registration process.

Trulioo is another company which aggregates social data from the Internet; it then runs proprietary algorithms which can spot ‘fake IDs’, such as those created on Facebook. Developers are advised:

TruVerify is installed on your website as a widget that enables global identity verification with as little as a single click supporting 9 different social networks and email providers. Once the user authenticates to their preferred provider, you send our API the profile information you would like verified, and we will return match results with a related confidence score in real-time. The verification process does not rely on information that a user has claimed in any specific social network profile. Instead it draws conclusions about the user’s identity based on their interactions on the Internet across time utilizing many sources to correlate identity information. 

Higher levels of activity result in a higher score and are used to determine the level of social embededness or degree of digital life presence. This in turn is used to determine the confidence level on the consumers’ identity information. 

Depending on customer requirements, these responses may be supplemented with historical and temporal analysis, crowd sourced analytics and correlation against public information sets.

Trulioo is partnered with several companies, including Janrain, Socure, and Verizon, which provides ‘Universal Identity Services’.[3] Trulioo has been boasting that the UK government is planning to use its services, and saying social logins are a good way to “get people on board”.

For a few years now, financial organisations, such as PayPal and Equifax, have been using social profiles as an additional authentication factor when it comes to authorisation. (So it helps that Google and Facebook are insisting people use their real name.)

In other words, even without seeing your birth certificate or passport, the information contained in these profiles is considered to bolster the trustworthiness of data from credit bureaus, cell phones, and criminal records, and allow you to apply for credit online. Financial institutions are already using the services of companies like Janrain, Trulioo, and Socure to decrease the risk of fraud. These companies use “social biometrics”, to screen an online profile to see if it’s a “wet carbon lifeform”, i.e. a real person. The identity proofing companies take in all the data the person has ever entered into any of the social networks, combine it with other “publicly available data”, and analyse it to assess how genuine it is. There are no laws restricting the collection of this data, and it is even more valuable because it is user-generated (not from cookies), and therefore more reliable.

“While the companies can access only public information or what people choose to share, a great deal is readily accessible. Many young people allow the public to see certain parts of their Facebook profiles, as well as accounts on Twitter andLinkedIn (LNKD). Consumers also leave traces of themselves on blog posts, Yelp (YELP) reviews, and online forums. Public data can include photo tags, locale check-ins, and a person’s network of friends. Facebook and LinkedIn provide software tools that let companies automatically import information from profiles on the social networks—with users’ permission—and consumers are allowing this more often, opting for the ease of signing into a website through Facebook, for instance, instead of filling out a separate form. 

Intuit, the largest seller of personal-finance software and a provider of payment systems, has begun using LinkedIn to help verify the identities of users, whose profiles on the site list detailed employment history and often include endorsements and recommendations from colleagues. “There’s definitely enough meat on the bone there,” says Ken Miller, vice president of strategic risk services at Intuit. 

Equifax is teaming up with government agencies, both state and federal, to help detect whether citizens who are receiving benefits are truly eligible. The bureau must verify identity, state of residence, the existence of a criminal record, and income level, things that social media can help check, Roy says.

Even without any credit history, an individual’s social activity online can, over time, be enough to authenticate an identity to Level of Assurance 1. Once a user has begun the process, (e.g. by clicking, “sign in with Facebook”), an identity file is created, and can gradually be built up to become a trusted identity, by adding other layers of authentication, such as passport, driving licence, and biometrics such as fingerprints, or heartbeat patterns.

With all of these layers put together, a fully assured, Level 4 identity has been created, allowing that person to participate in everyday life. After all, you’ll be needing Level 4 more and more as time goes by….

You’re then supposed to carry this identity around with you wherever you go, because you’ll be needing it throughout the day – not just to access government services, or fill out a few forms on the Internet, but to open doors, pay for things, use your smart meter, log in at work, and much more, as time goes by, and trust decreases.

Labelling ‘the trusted ones’ has already begun. Have you noticed some websites are ‘secure’ and have the green address bar?

And you can’t leave comments on YouTube any more unless you sign in to Google.

For years, companies such as Google have traded their wares to marketers looking for that holy grail of advertising: an in-depth view of each individual customer, to be targeted with personalised ads. This they achieve by tracking their customers across the Internet, and in their phone and credit card transactions, in order to generate identity profiles of them. The profiles contain sets of ‘attributes’ which make up the digital identity. Marketing has gone beyond demographics, to dig deeper into who we are and reveal our ‘psychographics’. Our religious and political beliefs, our friends, our routines, our professed selves.

Are we really supposed to believe these profiles are not used by the NSA?

The NSA raised its efforts to control identity/access after the WikiLeaks saga and put together the Insider Threat Program – the message is, ‘trust no-one’, and always report them! The military sets the standards, and society must follow. Everyone is considered to be a potential threat. It’s all about “Information Assurance”.

Identity is also to be tied to the device we are using – this is part of achieving high authentication, and is to be controlled by the Trusted Computing Module (TCM), installed in billions of devices already. The TCM works with Windows 8 (which the German government was warned about), and has been approved by the NSA. Windows 7 can be used until the year 2020. The NSA also works with NIST (which is bringing in the NSTIC) to develop encryption standards.

All points are to be covered.

There are a great many sensors all around us which could be used to provide information to augment what is already known. Certainly, the trend will always be to increase security, as this is the start of a never-ending race to beat the identity thieves. The more that is known about a person, the less risk there is to the corporatocracy. Phones themselves have an incredible array of sensors,[4] even without biometrics.

Earlier this year, The Guardian reported on Raytheon’s RIOT system; they feature a video of a specialist at Raytheon showing how individuals could be tracked through their digital footprints, combined with transaction data.

However, the demo of RIOT, and even metadata analysis by the NSA, utterly pales in comparison to what marketers are already doing – with the information provided by the Data Controllers. By examining our every move, in real-time, highly revealing personality and lifestyle profiles are being stored and analysed all the time.

So if you’ve been riled by the idea of being tracked and scrutinized by intelligence personnel, you’re certain to reject enrolment in the Worldwide Federated Identity Ecosystem they are now proposing.

In fact, this is a truly marvellous opportunity for non-compliance, since the system is said to be voluntary. Living in the matrix makes our identities more vulnerable than they have ever been, to hackers and governments and the NSA, and programmers who work for them, creating a one-way mirror for surveillance and behaviour control. Forget their promise of privacy, because there will always be mistakes, hacktivists, and, worst of all, the quantum computer belonging to Google and Lockheed Martin.

Anyhow, the NSA, in its effort to predict crime, is already able to crack any encryption the Identity Providers provide, since they are all in cahoots:

The program used by the NSA that carves out its own “back door” in online encryptions, code-named Bullrun, “deployed custom-built, superfast computers to break codes.” But, the agency didn’t accomplish this on its own. 

According to the leaked document, courtesy of Snowden, The NSA worked with technology companies in the US and around the world to create entry points into their products. Some companies claim they were coerced by the government to build a back door for them or hand over their “master encryption keys.” 

The document, however, does not reveal specific company names. 

The NSA says its ability to crack encryptions is vital to its mission. The agency’s efforts are still governed by laws that forbid it from deliberately targeting Americans without a warrant, but if nothing else, the document on “Bullrun” reveals that privacy protections cannot necessarily deter the intelligence community from not only collecting data, but reading the information it collects.

Notes:

[1] Smart-rings and bracelets are now being trialled in an NSTIC pilot http://getmindsmart.com/NSTIC_UPDATES_LINKS.html by Exponent, HID Global, and others, with money awarded by the US government.

[2] Dan Blum noted, “Other than allowing one to choose or remove applications one by one, Facebook provides no granularity over how one’s data is handled. If, next to “Use apps, plugins, games and websites on Facebook and elsewhere?” one click’s on “Edit” there is only the draconian option to “Turn off Platform” and the stern warning…. You will not be able to log into websites or applications using Facebook; Your friends won’t be ale to interact and share with you using apps and websites; Instant personalisation will also be turned off; Apps you’ve previously installed may still have info you shared; Please contact these apps for details on removing this data.”

[3] Verizon is one of the IDPs chosen by the UK government. However, as reported by The Guardian, Verizon passed customer call records to the NSA, containing, “the phone number of every caller and recipient; the unique serial number of the phones involved; the time and duration of each phone call; and potentially the location of each of the participants when the call happened.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/phone-call-metadata-information-authorities

[4] See ‘A Survey of Mobile Phone Sensing’, by Lane, et al., 2010)
http://www.academia.edu/646416/A_survey_of_mobile_phone_sensing

Source: Activist Post

Bitcoin Tops PayPal For First Time in Total Transactions

Yesterday represented a milestone for the Bitcoin network which recorded over $416 million in transactions.  It was the first time Bitcoin topped PayPal in the dollar amount of daily transactions.

However, one transaction alone in Bitcoin was valued over $145 million. Of course, these levels are not achievable on PayPal which is part of why they, and everybody else, will be left in Bitcoin's wake.

From Nov. 22, 2013

Also notable, this same address has been used to move a total of $500 million the last few days, according to Redditors who study the blockchain.  It seems like some heavy hitters are swinging for the fences with Bitcoin.

Activist Post

Potato power: the spuds that could light the world

Mashed, boiled, baked or fried? You probably have a preference for your potatoes. Haim Rabinowitch, however, likes his spuds “hacked”.

For the past few years, researcher Rabinowitch and colleagues have been pushing the idea of “potato power” to deliver energy to people cut off from electricity grids. Hook up a spud to a couple of cheap metal plates, wires and LED bulbs, they argue, and it could provide lighting to remote towns and villages around the world.

They’ve also discovered a simple but ingenious trick to make potatoes particularly good at producing energy. “A single potato can power enough LED lamps for a room for 40 days,” claims Rabinowitch, who is based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The idea may seem absurd, yet it is rooted in sound science. Still, Rabinowitch and his team have discovered that actually launching potato power in the real world is much more complex than it first appears.

While Rabinowitch and team have found a way to make potatoes produce more power than usual, the basic principles are taught in high school science classes, to demonstrate how batteries work.

To make a battery from organic material, all you need is two metals – an anode, which is the negative electrode, such as zinc, and a cathode, the positively charged electrode, such as copper. The acid inside the potato forms a chemical reaction with the zinc and copper, and when the electrons flow from one material to another, energy is released.

This was discovered by Luigi Galvani in 1780 when he connected two metals to the legs of a frog, causing its muscles to twitch. But you can put many materials between these two electrodes to get the same effect. Alexander Volta, around the time of Galvani, used saltwater-soaked paper. Others have made “earth batteries” using two metal plates and a pile of dirt, or a bucket of water.

Super spuds

Potatoes are often the preferred vegetable of choice for teaching high school science students these principles. Yet to the surprise of Rabinowitch, no one had scientifically studied spuds as an energy source. So in 2010, he decided to give it a try, along with PhD student Alex Goldberg, and Boris Rubinsky of the University of California, Berkeley.

“We looked at 20 different types of potatoes,” explains Goldberg, “and we looked at their internal resistance, which allows us to understand how much energy was lost by heat.”

They found that by simply boiling the potatoes for eight minutes, it broke down the organic tissues inside the potatoes, reducing resistance and allowing for freer movement of electrons– thus producing more energy. They also increased the energy output by slicing the potato into four or five pieces, each sandwiched by a copper and zinc plate, to make a series. “We found we could improve the output 10 times, which made it interesting economically, because the cost of energy drops down,” says Goldberg.

“It’s low voltage energy,” says Rabinowitch, “but enough to construct a battery that could charge mobile phones or laptops in places where there is no grid, no power connection.”

Their cost analyses suggested that a single boiled potato battery with zinc and copper electrodes generates portable energy at an estimated $9 per kilowatt hour, which is 50-fold cheaper than a typical 1.5 volt AA alkaline cell or D cell battery, which can cost $49–84 per kilowatt hour. It’s also an estimated six times cheaper than standard kerosene lamps used in the developing world.

Which raises an important question – why isn’t the potato battery already a roaring success?

Source: BBC

Bill Hicks – JFK

50 Years to the day since the JFK Assassination. I had to post something about it.

New Xbox One Can See Your Penis

Cannabis cure stories keep coming out

Cannabis was used for two recently publicized cures of serious disease. Both treatments were done surreptitiously in the USA. Fifteen states have legalized medical marijuana minimally and twelve others are considering the same. But the Obama administration is unleashing their Fed dogs on those legal medical marijuana outlets.

Few or no deaths have occurred from hemp remedies over the centuries. Yet over 100,000 die annually from correctly prescribed pharmaceutical prescriptions in the USA alone. Go figure!

Legal Medical Marijuana

In states that permit medical marijuana, smoking weed eliminates glaucoma symptoms. But its legal use is more often relegated to soften side effects of toxic chemicals such as chemo or to help cancer and AIDs cachexia patients regain their appetites. In other words, it's allowed more as a comforting adjunct to mainstream medicine than as a cure.

The most famous pioneer of cannabis hemp oil, Rick Simpson, who is exiled in Europe, has said smoking weed doesn't cure much. Instead, THC hemp oil needs to be produced and ingested. This achieves miraculous results. He used his oil topically to fully cure his skin cancer when the medicos couldn't in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Then he gave it freely to fellow local citizens who needed something the medical system wasn't providing, complete cures for cancer and heart disease. Keep in mind that Canadians don't have to pay out of pocket for medical expenses. So they weren't looking for a cheap fix. They were seeking complete recoveries. And they all got that from ingesting small amounts of Rick's free cannabis hemp oil.

Two Amazing Stories

The most recent involves a two year old boy and his father. This story was picked up by the London Daily Mail. The boy had brain cancer and was totally debilitated. Brain surgery removed only ten percent of the tumor, so in came the chemo. The boy got worse and worse. He couldn't eat at all. The dad found out about hemp oil and he got some legally in Montana.

The father knew the doctors wouldn't let him use it, so he surreptitiously fed it to his son through the boy's physically attached feed tube. Improvement began within days. Within a few months, the boy was cancer free. A year later, he is still cancer free. The father never told the doctors about the oil. The docs were probably high-fiving over their medical efforts while oblivious of the cannabis.

Then there is a young woman, Shona Banda, whose book Live Free or Die is based on her recovery from Crohn's disease using hemp oil. Until she discovered cannabis, she had undergone 15 surgeries and had "every removable organ removed". Her condition only worsened.

She was using a water cooled bong to smoke her weed at first because she couldn't find a hemp oil source. Then she noticed an oily film collecting inside the bong's glass globe. She began scrapping it off and ingesting it daily. She had stumbled upon a lighter version of cannabis hemp oil. Nevertheless, it cured her.

History and Research

Hemp cannabis extracts were prescribed by MDs and sold in pharmacies before hemp was banned in the USA. Actually, cannabis cure-all use goes back centuries.

Recent research in Japan, Italy, and the USA has proven THC cannabis destroys cancer cells without harming others. Why doesn't this information get out more? Here's an example of why. The NIH (National Health Institute) funded a Virginia study to prove weed damages the immune system. When the lab demonstrated cannabis was safe and killed cancer cells, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) shut it down.

You are encouraged to examine the sources below for more information:

Rick Simpson's website featuring his famous documentary video "Run from the Cure"
http://phoenixtears.ca/

Video: Easy instructions for making cannabis hemp oil http://healthmaven.blogspot.com/2011/05/hemp...

Text instructions from the master - Rick Simpson http://phoenixtears.ca/hemp-oil/make-the-med...

Shona Banda tells her story on video http://healthmaven.blogspot.com/2011/05/shon...

Video: Meet the Dad and his baby boy cured from brain cancer http://healthmaven.blogspot.com/2011/05/meet...

http://www.naturalnews.com

Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions

Chevron, Exxon and BP among companies most responsible for climate change since dawn of industrial age, figures show



Oil, coal and gas companies are contributing to most carbon emissions, causing climate change and some are also funding denial campaigns. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.

The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.

The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Gore as a "crucial step forward" found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which has been published in the journal Climatic Change.

"There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world," climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado said. "But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two."

Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years – well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing dangerous climate change.

Many of the same companies are also sitting on substantial reserves of fossil fuel which – if they are burned – puts the world at even greater risk of dangerous climate change.

Climate change experts said the data set was the most ambitious effort so far to hold individual carbon producers, rather than governments, to account.

The United Nations climate change panel, the IPCC, warned in September that at current rates the world stood within 30 years of exhausting its "carbon budget" – the amount of carbon dioxide it could emit without going into the danger zone above 2C warming. The former US vice-president and environmental champion, Al Gore, said the new carbon accounting could re-set the debate about allocating blame for the climate crisis.

Leaders meeting in Warsaw for the UN climate talks this week clashed repeatedly over which countries bore the burden for solving the climate crisis – historic emitters such as America or Europe or the rising economies of India and China.

Gore in his comments said the analysis underlined that it should not fall to governments alone to act on climate change.

"This study is a crucial step forward in our understanding of the evolution of the climate crisis. The public and private sectors alike must do what is necessary to stop global warming," Gore told the Guardian. "Those who are historically responsible for polluting our atmosphere have a clear obligation to be part of the solution."

Between them, the 90 companies on the list of top emitters produced 63% of the cumulative global emissions of industrial carbon dioxide and methane between 1751 to 2010, amounting to about 914 gigatonne CO2 emissions, according to the research. All but seven of the 90 were energy companies producing oil, gas and coal. The remaining seven were cement manufacturers.

The list of 90 companies included 50 investor-owned firms – mainly oil companies with widely recognised names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP , and Royal Dutch Shell and coal producers such as British Coal Corp, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton.

Some 31 of the companies that made the list were state-owned companies such as Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco, Russia's Gazprom and Norway's Statoil.

Nine were government run industries, producing mainly coal in countries such as China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Poland, the host of this week's talks.

Experts familiar with Heede's research and the politics of climate change said they hoped the analysis could help break the deadlock in international climate talks.

"It seemed like maybe this could break the logjam," said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard. "There are all kinds of countries that have produced a tremendous amount of historical emissions that we do not normally talk about. We do not normally talk about Mexico or Poland or Venezuela. So then it's not just rich v poor, it is also producers v consumers, and resource rich v resource poor."

Michael Mann, the climate scientist, said he hoped the list would bring greater scrutiny to oil and coal companies' deployment of their remaining reserves. "What I think could be a game changer here is the potential for clearly fingerprinting the sources of those future emissions," he said. "It increases the accountability for fossil fuel burning. You can't burn fossil fuels without the rest of the world knowing about it."

Others were less optimistic that a more comprehensive accounting of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions would make it easier to achieve the emissions reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

John Ashton, who served as UK's chief climate change negotiator for six years, suggested that the findings reaffirmed the central role of fossil fuel producing entities in the economy.

"The challenge we face is to move in the space of not much more than a generation from a carbon-intensive energy system to a carbonneutral energy system. If we don't do that we stand no chance of keeping climate change within the 2C threshold," Ashton said.

"By highlighting the way in which a relatively small number of large companies are at the heart of the current carbon-intensive growth model, this report highlights that fundamental challenge."

Meanwhile, Oreskes, who has written extensively about corporate-funded climate denial, noted that several of the top companies on the list had funded the climate denial movement.

"For me one of the most interesting things to think about was the overlap of large scale producers and the funding of disinformation campaigns, and how that has delayed action," she said.

The data represents eight years of exhaustive research into carbon emissions over time, as well as the ownership history of the major emitters.

The companies' operations spanned the globe, with company headquarters in 43 different countries. "These entities extract resources from every oil, natural gas and coal province in the world, and process the fuels into marketable products that are sold to consumers on every nation on Earth," Heede writes in the paper.

The largest of the investor-owned companies were responsible for an outsized share of emissions. Nearly 30% of emissions were produced just by the top 20 companies, the research found.

By Heede's calculation, government-run oil and coal companies in the former Soviet Union produced more greenhouse gas emissions than any other entity – just under 8.9% of the total produced over time. China came a close second with its government-run entities accounting for 8.6% of total global emissions.

ChevronTexaco was the leading emitter among investor-owned companies, causing 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions to date, with Exxon not far behind at 3.2%. In third place, BP caused 2.5% of global emissions to date.

The historic emissions record was constructed using public records and data from the US department of energy's Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Centre, and took account of emissions all along the supply chain.

The centre put global industrial emissions since 1751 at 1,450 gigatonnes.

Source: The Guardian

BP Pays PR Trolls to Threaten Online Critics

Excellent Animation Video - Ending Overfishing

How to Make Your Own Crystal Batteries

Decision awaited on genetically modified insect trial

The hope is that the male fruit flies will seek out and mate with the wild females to pass on the gene

A UK biotechnology company has applied for permission to carry out the first field trial in Europe of a genetically modified insect.

If it receives approval, the company, Oxitec, will carry out a small-scale test of GM olive flies in Spain.

The aim is to combat this olive crop pest by releasing male flies that have a "female-killing gene".

If the GM flies can outbreed the wild flies, the female offspring will die - reducing the olive fly population.

Continue reading the main story

Bumper crop

• Approximately 5 million hectares of farmland in the European Union
• More than half of the world's supply of olive oil is produced in Spain
• Olive oil fraud - where oils are mislabelled or cut with cheaper oils - has become such a recognised problem that the European Commission held a workshop earlier this year, dedicated to finding a reliable way to authenticate olive oil.

Source: European Commission

The technology was created by the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Oxitec, Dr Luke Alphey.

"Olive fly is the single major pest of olive production," Dr Alphey explained.

"In a bad year, you can lose the whole of an olive crop.

"And it's a very hard pest to control; it's been treated with insecticides, but now there's a lot of resistance."

Olives are an important commercial crop in Europe; olive groves account for about five million hectares in the EU. And, according to Oxitec, the olive industry in Greece spends approximately 35 million euros (£30m) annually on insecticides to control olive flies - to prevent an estimated loss to the industry of 650 million euros.

Killer mosquitoes

Thousands of miles from the Europe's olive groves, the company is testing the ability of its technology to combat a lethal disease.

In Brazil, Oxitec and its collaborators are trialling genetically modified mosquitoes - releasing males with the killer gene in.

Dr Luke Alphey explains the aim of the planned trials.

The basis of the technology is to inject the insect eggs with the lethal gene - a chunk of genetic code that essentially programmes the flies to die as they're developing.

The scientists have tuned their modification so that it specifically kills females. And, in the laboratory, the scientists rear their flies with a dietary supplement that acts as an antidote to this killer gene.

This means they can breed and rear generations of their GM flies to release into the wild, and have a male-only population.

Oxitec is already trialling its GM mosquitoes in an effort to combat dengue fever in Brazil

Once those male GM flies are released, Dr Alphey explained, "they will seek out the wild females, mate with those females and then their female offspring will inherit that gene and as they grow up, they will die."

In the most recent trial in Brazil - in a town called Mandacaru - the company has reported a 96% reduction in the dengue mosquito (Aedes aegypti) population.

The scientists use almost identical technology in their fruit fly research, with the ultimate aim of rearing a female-killing strain of GM male flies.

"We have had years of lab experiments and cage experiments, and an experiment in a glasshouse in Crete," explained Dr Alphey.

"And the next step is the first transition to the field, which is what this Spain trial is."

If they receive permission from the Spanish authorities, the researchers will release GM flies around net-covered olive trees, to contain the insects and to prevent the experiment from "being swamped by flies in the environment".

Unpredictable environment

Researcher Martha Koukidou from Oxitec explains how to rear GM fruit flies

Helen Wallace from Genewatch, an organisation that monitors the use of genetic technology, has criticised the company.

A major concern, she says is that these non-native flies could have "undesirable genetic traits", such as pesticide resistance, which could spread into the wild population when the flies mate.

"We also don't think it's a very effective technology, "she told BBC News.

"These flies are not sterile. They will produce offspring and those female offspring are programmed to die at the larval stage, which means there will be lots of GM maggots in these olives."

But Dr Alphey says that years of incremental trials and safety testing have now shown "any negative effects on human health or the environment from the use of these insects".

The technique uses a micro-needle to inject the olive fly eggs with the lethal gene

The crop in for this planned Spanish trial will be destroyed after the test. And the company maintains that the specificity of their technology could have significant environmental benefits.

Dr Alphey pointed out that the male flies seek out and mate with the pest species, whereas chemical pesticides can affect a number of different insect species.

Oxitec's chief executive, Hadyn Parry said: "It will have to be approved by regulators in the EU and no regulator would approve a product that carries a health risk."

UK Environment Secretary Owen Paterson recently branded as "wicked" opponents of genetically modified (GM) rice enriched with vitamin A, highlighting his support of research into GM crops.

In response to Oxitec's application, a spokesperson for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "It's crucial that scientific studies like this can go ahead, so we can gather the evidence required about GM technologies that could bring great benefits to farmers and the environment."

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