Monday, March 31, 2014
Friday, March 28, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
US Jazz musicians were drafted into CIA’s MKULTRA
Here is a bit of US history that shows the reach of the CIA’s infamous mind-control program, MKULTRA.
During the 1940s and 50s, it was common knowledge that musicians who were busted for drug use were shipped, or volunteered to go, to Lexington, Kentucky. Lex was the first Narcotics Farm and US Health Dept. drug treatment hospital in the US.
According to diverse sources, here’s a partial list of the reported “hundreds” of jazz musicians who went to Lex: Red Rodney, Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Sonny Stitt, Howard McGhee, Elvin Jones, Zoot Sims, Lee Morgan, Tadd Dameron, Stan Levey, Jackie McLean.
It’s also reported that Ray Charles was there, and William Burroughs, Peter Lorre, and Sammy Davis, Jr.
It was supposed to be a rehab center. A place for drying out.
But it was something else too. Lex was used by the CIA as one of its MKULTRA centers for experimentation on inmates.
The doctor in charge of this mind control program was Harris Isbell. Ironically, Isbell was, at the same time, a member of the FDA’s Advisory Committee on the Abuse of Depressant and Stimulant Drugs.
Isbell gave LSD and other psychedelics to inmates at Lex.
At Sandoz labs in Switzerland, Dr. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, also synthesized psilocybin from magic mushrooms. The CIA got some of this new synthetic from Hofmann and gave it to Isbell so he could try it out on inmates at Lex.
MKULTRA was a CIA program whose goal was to control minds…in part through the use of drugs.
Isbell worked at Lex from the 1940s through 1963. It is reported that in one experiment, Isbell gave LSD to 7 inmates for 77 consecutive days. At 4 times the normal dosage. That is a chemical hammer of incredible proportions.
To induce inmates to join this drug experiment, they were offered the drug of their choice, which in many cases was heroin. So at a facility dedicated to drying out and rehabbing addicts, addicts were subjected to MKULTRA experiments and THEN a re-establishment of their former habit.
Apparently as many as 800 different drugs were sent to Isbell by the CIA or CIA fronts to use on patients at Lex. Two of the fronts? The US Navy and the US National Institute of Mental Health.
In another MKULTRA experiment at Lex, nine men were strapped down on tables. They were injected with psilocybin. Lights were beamed at their eyes–a typical mind control component.
During Isbell’s tenure, no one knows how many separate experiments he ran on the inmates. No one knows what other mind-control programming he attempted to insert along with the drugs.
As I say, Lex was the main stop for drying out for NY jazz musicians. How many of them were taken into these MKULTRA programs?
As Martin Lee explains in his book, Acid Dreams, “It became an open secret…that if the [heroin] supply got tight [on the street], you could always commit yourself to Lexington, where heroin and morphine were doled out as payment if you volunteered for Isbell’s whacky drug experiments. (Small wonder Lexington had a return rate of 90%.)”
A June 15, 1999, Counterpunch article by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, “CIA’s Sidney Gottlieb: Pusher, Assassin & Pimp— US Official Poisoner Dies,” contains these quotes on Dr. Isbell:
“Gottlieb also funded the experiments of Dr. Harris Isbell. Isbell ran the Center for Addiction Research in Lexington, Kentucky. Passing through Isbell’s center was a captive group of human guinea pigs in the form of a steady stream of black heroin addicts. More than 800 different chemical compounds were shipped from Gottlieb to Lexington for testing on Isbell’s patients.
“Perhaps the most infamous experiment came when Isbell gave LSD to seven black men for seventy-seven straight days. Isbell’s research notes indicates that he gave the men ‘quadruple’ the ‘normal’ dosages. The doctor marveled at the men’s apparent tolerance to these remarkable amounts of LSD. Isbell wrote in his notes that ‘this type of behavior is to be expected in patients of this type.’
“In other Gottlieb-funded experiment at the Center, Isbell had nine black males strapped to tables, injected them with psylocybin, inserted rectal thermometers, had lights shown in their eyes to measure pupil dilation and had their joints whacked to test neural reactions.”
Source Activist Post
Microsoft and Others Reserve Right To Read Customers' Emails
Microsoft has asserted its right to read customers’ emails, according to a story on CNN. Last week the company admitted in federal court documents that it had hacked its way into a journalist’s Hotmail account to stop a leak of some proprietary software. The company said it was justified in doing so because the software, had it leaked, would have empowered hackers to exploit security vulnerabilities and put other customers at risk.
"In this case, we took extraordinary actions based on the specific circumstances," said John Frank, a Microsoft lawyer.
According to the FBI, Microsoft learned in 2012 that an ex-employee had leaked the software to an anonymous blogger. Fearing that the blogger could could sell the information, company attorneys approved “content pulls” from the blogger’s email accounts. Under such a situation law enforcement agencies would be required to obtain a warrant. Microsoft claimed, though, that its terms of service allow the company to access information in customers’ accounts “in the most exceptional circumstances.”
"Microsoft clearly believes that the users' personal data belongs to Microsoft, not the users themselves,” said Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. McCall believes users would be upset if they knew what the terms of service of most email providers actually allowed.
"This is part of the broader problem with privacy policies," she said. "There are hidden terms that the users don't actually know are there. If the terms were out in the open, people would be horrified by them.”
The problem extends beyond Microsoft according to the Guardian. Apple, Google, and Yahoo all have similar policies. A recent story quoted excerpts from each company policy.
Google, for instance, requires that users "acknowledge and agree that Google may access … your account information and any content associated with that account… in a good faith belief that such access … is reasonably necessary to … protect against imminent harm to the … property … of Google.”
The problem is that most people don’t read the terms when signing up for a new service said Charlie Howe of Skyhigh Networks.
“I would guess that most people don’t actually read the full terms and conditions before using a new application, and they would probably be surprised by what they are actually agreeing to when they click the ‘accept’ button on certain cloud services,” he said.
According to the CNN story, Microsoft, recognizing the topic is sensitive, has announced that it will bring in a former federal judge to review cases in the future where it may need to access customer information.
Sources: CNN, The Guardian
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Facebook’s Facial-Recognition Tech Is Now Better Than the FBI’s. Here’s Why That’s Scary
The giant social network just announced it can recognize your face with 97 percent accuracy
Facebook and the FBI are engaged in an arms race to create technology capable of recognizing someone just by looking at a picture of their face.
Facebook is winning that battle, which provides a new incentive for the government to use the social network’s data for surveillance-related purposes.
This week, Facebook announced DeepFace, a new piece of facial-recognition technology developed by an in-house team of developers and researchers. One striking part of the announcement was the claim that the software was now up to 97.25 percent accurate. Using “networks of a simulated neurons to spot patterns in data,” Facebook just became the best facial-identifier in the world.
Which is interesting, really, because the FBI—through its Next Generation Identification (NGI) program—has spent $1.2 billion of its own on facial-recognition technology. But their facial-technology program only works about 80 percent of the time.
“It does imply that Facebook’s facial-recognition technology may be farther along than the FBI’s,” says Jeramie Scott, who serves on the national security counsel at the D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Centers, or EPIC, a group that’s known for pushing for privacy rights.
To be sure, Facebook and the FBI claim to have very different purposes for the facial-recognition technology. Facebook wants to get better at tagging people in photos, data that be sold to advertisers. (If someone uploads a picture of you hanging out in a Gap store, for instance, that’s valuable information to a clothing retailer.)
The FBI, on the other hand, plans to roll out its facial-recognition technology this summer to local law enforcement agencies around the country. It claims the software will help identify suspects in crimes. For instance, if surveillance video captures the face of a man robbing a bank, the NGI program will theoretically be able to comb through mugshots and Department of Motor Vehicles records to match the face and find the suspect.
The FBI has explicitly pointed out that it will only be drawing photos from national repositories—i.e. government sources. “Query photos and photos obtained from social networking sites, surveillance cameras, and similar sources are not used to populate the national repository,” the FBI recently noted.
(Deepface)
But the fear, of course, is that the FBI will find ways of tapping into Facebook’s data—especially now that Facebook has become so proficient at identifying people based on their faces. ”There’s always the potential that the government will leverage the data that’s collected by the private sector,” Scott adds.
Facial recognition is difficult to get right, especially using grainy photos captured by surveillance cameras. But more and more businesses are spending resources to develop better facial-recognition systems. Lockheed Martin, for instance, recently announced it was spending more to become “a leader in biometric solutions.” It’s also worth noting that the government has yet to regulate private and commercial facial recognition endeavors.
Regardless, the implication is clear: We’re moving toward a post-anonymity future. Whether its Facebook or the FBI, facial-recognition technology makes its possible for both the private and public sectors to track your movements—whether it’s for profit or surveillance.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware
One presentation outlines how the NSA performs “industrial-scale exploitation” of computer networks across the world.
Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.
The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.
The covert infrastructure that supports the hacking efforts operates from the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from eavesdropping bases in the United Kingdom and Japan. GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, appears to have played an integral role in helping to develop the implants tactic.
In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.
The implants being deployed were once reserved for a few hundred hard-to-reach targets, whose communications could not be monitored through traditional wiretaps. But the documents analyzed by The Intercept show how the NSA has aggressively accelerated its hacking initiatives in the past decade by computerizing some processes previously handled by humans. The automated system – codenamed TURBINE – is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”
In a top-secret presentation, dated August 2009, the NSA describes a pre-programmed part of the covert infrastructure called the “Expert System,” which is designed to operate “like the brain.” The system manages the applications and functions of the implants and “decides” what tools they need to best extract data from infected machines.
Mikko Hypponen, an expert in malware who serves as chief research officer at the Finnish security firm F-Secure, calls the revelations “disturbing.” The NSA’s surveillance techniques, he warns, could inadvertently be undermining the security of the Internet.
“When they deploy malware on systems,” Hypponen says, “they potentially create new vulnerabilities in these systems, making them more vulnerable for attacks by third parties.”
Hypponen believes that governments could arguably justify using malware in a small number of targeted cases against adversaries. But millions of malware implants being deployed by the NSA as part of an automated process, he says, would be “out of control.”
“That would definitely not be proportionate,” Hypponen says. “It couldn’t possibly be targeted and named. It sounds like wholesale infection and wholesale surveillance.”
The NSA declined to answer questions about its deployment of implants, pointing to a new presidential policy directive announced by President Obama. “As the president made clear on 17 January,” the agency said in a statement, “signals intelligence shall be collected exclusively where there is a foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose to support national and departmental missions, and not for any other purposes.”
“Owning the Net”
The NSA began rapidly escalating its hacking efforts a decade ago. In 2004, according to secret internal records, the agency was managing a small network of only 100 to 150 implants. But over the next six to eight years, as an elite unit called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) recruited new hackers and developed new malware tools, the number of implants soared to tens of thousands.
To penetrate foreign computer networks and monitor communications that it did not have access to through other means, the NSA wanted to go beyond the limits of traditional signals intelligence, or SIGINT, the agency’s term for the interception of electronic communications. Instead, it sought to broaden “active” surveillance methods – tactics designed to directly infiltrate a target’s computers or network devices.
In the documents, the agency describes such techniques as “a more aggressive approach to SIGINT” and says that the TAO unit’s mission is to “aggressively scale” these operations.
But the NSA recognized that managing a massive network of implants is too big a job for humans alone.
“One of the greatest challenges for active SIGINT/attack is scale,” explains the top-secret presentation from 2009. “Human ‘drivers’ limit ability for large-scale exploitation (humans tend to operate within their own environment, not taking into account the bigger picture).”
The agency’s solution was TURBINE. Developed as part of TAO unit, it is described in the leaked documents as an “intelligent command and control capability” that enables “industrial-scale exploitation.”
TURBINE was designed to make deploying malware much easier for the NSA’s hackers by reducing their role in overseeing its functions. The system would “relieve the user from needing to know/care about the details,” the NSA’s Technology Directorate notes in one secret document from 2009. “For example, a user should be able to ask for ‘all details about application X’ and not need to know how and where the application keeps files, registry entries, user application data, etc.”
In practice, this meant that TURBINE would automate crucial processes that previously had to be performed manually – including the configuration of the implants as well as surveillance collection, or “tasking,” of data from infected systems. But automating these processes was about much more than a simple technicality. The move represented a major tactical shift within the NSA that was expected to have a profound impact – allowing the agency to push forward into a new frontier of surveillance operations.
The ramifications are starkly illustrated in one undated top-secret NSA document, which describes how the agency planned for TURBINE to “increase the current capability to deploy and manage hundreds of Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and Computer Network Attack (CNA) implants to potentially millions of implants.” (CNE mines intelligence from computers and networks; CNA seeks to disrupt, damage or destroy them.)
Eventually, the secret files indicate, the NSA’s plans for TURBINE came to fruition. The system has been operational in some capacity since at least July 2010, and its role has become increasingly central to NSA hacking operations.
Earlier reports based on the Snowden files indicate that the NSA has already deployed between 85,000 and 100,000 of its implants against computers and networks across the world, with plans to keep on scaling up those numbers.
The intelligence community’s top-secret “Black Budget” for 2013, obtained by Snowden, lists TURBINE as part of a broader NSA surveillance initiative named “Owning the Net.”
The agency sought $67.6 million in taxpayer funding for its Owning the Net program last year. Some of the money was earmarked for TURBINE, expanding the system to encompass “a wider variety” of networks and “enabling greater automation of computer network exploitation.”
Circumventing Encryption
The NSA has a diverse arsenal of malware tools, each highly sophisticated and customizable for different purposes.
One implant, codenamed UNITEDRAKE, can be used with a variety of “plug-ins” that enable the agency to gain total control of an infected computer.
An implant plug-in named CAPTIVATEDAUDIENCE, for example, is used to take over a targeted computer’s microphone and record conversations taking place near the device. Another, GUMFISH, can covertly take over a computer’s webcam and snap photographs. FOGGYBOTTOM records logs of Internet browsing histories and collects login details and passwords used to access websites and email accounts. GROK is used to log keystrokes. And SALVAGERABBIT exfiltrates data from removable flash drives that connect to an infected computer.
The implants can enable the NSA to circumvent privacy-enhancing encryption tools that are used to browse the Internet anonymously or scramble the contents of emails as they are being sent across networks. That’s because the NSA’s malware gives the agency unfettered access to a target’s computer before the user protects their communications with encryption.
It is unclear how many of the implants are being deployed on an annual basis or which variants of them are currently active in computer systems across the world.
Previous reports have alleged that the NSA worked with Israel to develop the Stuxnet malware, which was used to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities. The agency also reportedly worked with Israel to deploy malware called Flame to infiltrate computers and spy on communications in countries across the Middle East.
According to the Snowden files, the technology has been used to seek out terror suspects as well as individuals regarded by the NSA as “extremist.” But the mandate of the NSA’s hackers is not limited to invading the systems of those who pose a threat to national security.
In one secret post on an internal message board, an operative from the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate describes using malware attacks against systems administrators who work at foreign phone and Internet service providers. By hacking an administrator’s computer, the agency can gain covert access to communications that are processed by his company. “Sys admins are a means to an end,” the NSA operative writes.
The internal post – titled “I hunt sys admins” – makes clear that terrorists aren’t the only targets of such NSA attacks. Compromising a systems administrator, the operative notes, makes it easier to get to other targets of interest, including any “government official that happens to be using the network some admin takes care of.”
Similar tactics have been adopted by Government Communications Headquarters, the NSA’s British counterpart. As the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported in September, GCHQ hacked computers belonging to network engineers at Belgacom, the Belgian telecommunications provider.
The mission, codenamed “Operation Socialist,” was designed to enable GCHQ to monitor mobile phones connected to Belgacom’s network. The secret files deem the mission a “success,” and indicate that the agency had the ability to covertly access Belgacom’s systems since at least 2010.
Infiltrating cellphone networks, however, is not all that the malware can be used to accomplish. The NSA has specifically tailored some of its implants to infect large-scale network routers used by Internet service providers in foreign countries. By compromising routers – the devices that connect computer networks and transport data packets across the Internet – the agency can gain covert access to monitor Internet traffic, record the browsing sessions of users, and intercept communications.
Two implants the NSA injects into network routers, HAMMERCHANT and HAMMERSTEIN, help the agency to intercept and perform “exploitation attacks” against data that is sent through a Virtual Private Network, a tool that uses encrypted “tunnels” to enhance the security and privacy of an Internet session.
The implants also track phone calls sent across the network via Skype and other Voice Over IP software, revealing the username of the person making the call. If the audio of the VOIP conversation is sent over the Internet using unencrypted “Real-time Transport Protocol” packets, the implants can covertly record the audio data and then return it to the NSA for analysis.
But not all of the NSA’s implants are used to gather intelligence, the secret files show. Sometimes, the agency’s aim is disruption rather than surveillance. QUANTUMSKY, a piece of NSA malware developed in 2004, is used to block targets from accessing certain websites. QUANTUMCOPPER, first tested in 2008, corrupts a target’s file downloads. These two “attack” techniques are revealed on a classified list that features nine NSA hacking tools, six of which are used for intelligence gathering. Just one is used for “defensive” purposes – to protect U.S. government networks against intrusions.
“Mass exploitation potential”
Before it can extract data from an implant or use it to attack a system, the NSA must first install the malware on a targeted computer or network.
According to one top-secret document from 2012, the agency can deploy malware by sending out spam emails that trick targets into clicking a malicious link. Once activated, a “back-door implant” infects their computers within eight seconds.
There’s only one problem with this tactic, codenamed WILLOWVIXEN: According to the documents, the spam method has become less successful in recent years, as Internet users have become wary of unsolicited emails and less likely to click on anything that looks suspicious.
Consequently, the NSA has turned to new and more advanced hacking techniques. These include performing so-called “man-in-the-middle” and “man-on-the-side” attacks, which covertly force a user’s internet browser to route to NSA computer servers that try to infect them with an implant.
To perform a man-on-the-side attack, the NSA observes a target’s Internet traffic using its global network of covert “accesses” to data as it flows over fiber optic cables or satellites. When the target visits a website that the NSA is able to exploit, the agency’s surveillance sensors alert the TURBINE system, which then “shoots” data packets at the targeted computer’s IP address within a fraction of a second.
In one man-on-the-side technique, codenamed QUANTUMHAND, the agency disguises itself as a fake Facebook server. When a target attempts to log in to the social media site, the NSA transmits malicious data packets that trick the target’s computer into thinking they are being sent from the real Facebook. By concealing its malware within what looks like an ordinary Facebook page, the NSA is able to hack into the targeted computer and covertly siphon out data from its hard drive. A top-secret animation demonstrates the tactic in action.
The documents show that QUANTUMHAND became operational in October 2010, after being successfully tested by the NSA against about a dozen targets.
According to Matt Blaze, a surveillance and cryptography expert at the University of Pennsylvania, it appears that the QUANTUMHAND technique is aimed at targeting specific individuals. But he expresses concerns about how it has been covertly integrated within Internet networks as part of the NSA’s automated TURBINE system.
“As soon as you put this capability in the backbone infrastructure, the software and security engineer in me says that’s terrifying,” Blaze says.
“Forget about how the NSA is intending to use it. How do we know it is working correctly and only targeting who the NSA wants? And even if it does work correctly, which is itself a really dubious assumption, how is it controlled?”
In an email statement to The Intercept, Facebook spokesman Jay Nancarrow said the company had “no evidence of this alleged activity.” He added that Facebook implemented HTTPS encryption for users last year, making browsing sessions less vulnerable to malware attacks.
Nancarrow also pointed out that other services besides Facebook could have been compromised by the NSA. “If government agencies indeed have privileged access to network service providers,” he said, “any site running only [unencrypted] HTTP could conceivably have its traffic misdirected.”
A man-in-the-middle attack is a similar but slightly more aggressive method that can be used by the NSA to deploy its malware. It refers to a hacking technique in which the agency covertly places itself between computers as they are communicating with each other.
This allows the NSA not only to observe and redirect browsing sessions, but to modify the content of data packets that are passing between computers.
The man-in-the-middle tactic can be used, for instance, to covertly change the content of a message as it is being sent between two people, without either knowing that any change has been made by a third party. The same technique is sometimes used by criminal hackers to defraud people.
A top-secret NSA presentation from 2012 reveals that the agency developed a man-in-the-middle capability called SECONDDATE to “influence real-time communications between client and server” and to “quietly redirect web-browsers” to NSA malware servers called FOXACID. In October, details about the FOXACID system were reported by the Guardian, which revealed its links to attacks against users of the Internet anonymity service Tor.
But SECONDDATE is tailored not only for “surgical” surveillance attacks on individual suspects. It can also be used to launch bulk malware attacks against computers.
According to the 2012 presentation, the tactic has “mass exploitation potential for clients passing through network choke points.”
Blaze, the University of Pennsylvania surveillance expert, says the potential use of man-in-the-middle attacks on such a scale “seems very disturbing.” Such an approach would involve indiscriminately monitoring entire networks as opposed to targeting individual suspects.
“The thing that raises a red flag for me is the reference to ‘network choke points,’” he says. “That’s the last place that we should be allowing intelligence agencies to compromise the infrastructure – because that is by definition a mass surveillance technique.”
To deploy some of its malware implants, the NSA exploits security vulnerabilities in commonly used Internet browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.
The agency’s hackers also exploit security weaknesses in network routers and in popular software plugins such as Flash and Java to deliver malicious code onto targeted machines.
The implants can circumvent anti-virus programs, and the NSA has gone to extreme lengths to ensure that its clandestine technology is extremely difficult to detect. An implant named VALIDATOR, used by the NSA to upload and download data to and from an infected machine, can be set to self-destruct – deleting itself from an infected computer after a set time expires.
In many cases, firewalls and other security measures do not appear to pose much of an obstacle to the NSA. Indeed, the agency’s hackers appear confident in their ability to circumvent any security mechanism that stands between them and compromising a computer or network. “If we can get the target to visit us in some sort of web browser, we can probably own them,” an agency hacker boasts in one secret document. “The only limitation is the ‘how.’”
Covert Infrastructure
The TURBINE implants system does not operate in isolation.
It is linked to, and relies upon, a large network of clandestine surveillance “sensors” that the agency has installed at locations across the world.
The NSA’s headquarters in Maryland are part of this network, as are eavesdropping bases used by the agency in Misawa, Japan and Menwith Hill, England.
The sensors, codenamed TURMOIL, operate as a sort of high-tech surveillance dragnet, monitoring packets of data as they are sent across the Internet.
When TURBINE implants exfiltrate data from infected computer systems, the TURMOIL sensors automatically identify the data and return it to the NSA for analysis. And when targets are communicating, the TURMOIL system can be used to send alerts or “tips” to TURBINE, enabling the initiation of a malware attack.
The NSA identifies surveillance targets based on a series of data “selectors” as they flow across Internet cables. These selectors, according to internal documents, can include email addresses, IP addresses, or the unique “cookies” containing a username or other identifying information that are sent to a user’s computer by websites such as Google, Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Twitter.
Other selectors the NSA uses can be gleaned from unique Google advertising cookies that track browsing habits, unique encryption key fingerprints that can be traced to a specific user, and computer IDs that are sent across the Internet when a Windows computer crashes or updates.
What’s more, the TURBINE system operates with the knowledge and support of other governments, some of which have participated in the malware attacks.
Classification markings on the Snowden documents indicate that NSA has shared many of its files on the use of implants with its counterparts in the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance – the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
GCHQ, the British agency, has taken on a particularly important role in helping to develop the malware tactics. The Menwith Hill satellite eavesdropping base that is part of the TURMOIL network, located in a rural part of Northern England, is operated by the NSA in close cooperation with GCHQ.
Top-secret documents show that the British base – referred to by the NSA as “MHS” for Menwith Hill Station – is an integral component of the TURBINE malware infrastructure and has been used to experiment with implant “exploitation” attacks against users of Yahoo and Hotmail.
In one document dated 2010, at least five variants of the QUANTUM hacking method were listed as being “operational” at Menwith Hill. The same document also reveals that GCHQ helped integrate three of the QUANTUM malware capabilities – and test two others – as part of a surveillance system it operates codenamed INSENSER.
GCHQ cooperated with the hacking attacks despite having reservations about their legality. One of the Snowden files, previously disclosed by Swedish broadcaster SVT, revealed that as recently as April 2013, GCHQ was apparently reluctant to get involved in deploying the QUANTUM malware due to “legal/policy restrictions.” A representative from a unit of the British surveillance agency, meeting with an obscure telecommunications standards committee in 2010, separately voiced concerns that performing “active” hacking attacks for surveillance “may be illegal” under British law.
In response to questions from The Intercept, GCHQ refused to comment on its involvement in the covert hacking operations. Citing its boilerplate response to inquiries, the agency said in a statement that “all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.”
Whatever the legalities of the United Kingdom and United States infiltrating computer networks, the Snowden files bring into sharp focus the broader implications. Under cover of secrecy and without public debate, there has been an unprecedented proliferation of aggressive surveillance techniques. One of the NSA’s primary concerns, in fact, appears to be that its clandestine tactics are now being adopted by foreign rivals, too.
“Hacking routers has been good business for us and our 5-eyes partners for some time,” notes one NSA analyst in a top-secret document dated December 2012. “But it is becoming more apparent that other nation states are honing their skillz [sic] and joining the scene.”
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
The Conspiracy Theory Is True: Agents Infiltrate Websites Intending To "Manipulate, Deceive, And Destroy Reputations"
In the annals of internet conspiracy theories, none is more pervasive than the one speculating paid government plants infiltrate websites, social network sites, and comment sections with an intent to sow discord, troll, and generally manipulate, deceive and destroy reputations. Guess what: it was all true.
And this time we have a pretty slideshow of formerly confidential data prepared by the UK NSA equivalent, the GCHQ, to confirm it, and Edward Snowden to thank for disclosing it. The messenger in this case is Glenn Greenwald, who has released the data in an article in his new website, firstlook.org, which he summarizes as follows: "by publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself." Call it Stasi for "Generation Internet."
Greenwald's latest revelation focuses on GCHQ’s previously secret unit, the JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group).
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we’re publishing today:
Other tactics aimed at individuals are listed here, under the revealing title “discredit a target”:
Then there are the tactics used to destroy companies the agency targets:
Critically, the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest activity for political ends.
The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries” by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:
Greenwald's punchline is disturbing, and is sure to make paradnoid conspiracy theorists crawl even deeper into their holes for one simple reason: all of their worst fears were true all along.
No matter your views on Anonymous, “hacktivists” or garden-variety criminals, it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they want – who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes – with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and disruption.
The broader point is that, far beyond hacktivists, these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats. As Anonymous expert Gabriella Coleman of McGill University told me, “targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs, resulting in the stifling of legitimate dissent.” Pointing to this study she published, Professor Coleman vehemently contested the assertion that “there is anything terrorist/violent in their actions.”
At this point Greenwald takes a detour into a well-known topic: Cass Sunstein. Who is Cass Sunstein? Recall: "Obama Picks Cass Sunstein (America’s Goebbels?) To Serve On NSA Oversight Panel."
Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups.
Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the White House, one that – while disputing key NSA claims – proceeded to propose many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored by the President who appointed them).
But while until now there was speculation that Sunstein's policies had been implemented, there was no proof. That is no longer the case:
... these GCHQ documents are the first to prove that a major western government is using some of the most controversial techniques to disseminate deception online and harm the reputations of targets. Under the tactics they use, the state is deliberately spreading lies on the internet about whichever individuals it targets, including the use of what GCHQ itself calls “false flag operations” and emails to people’s families and friends. Who would possibly trust a government to exercise these powers at all, let alone do so in secret, with virtually no oversight, and outside of any cognizable legal framework?
What is perhaps most disturbing is the level of detail these modern day Stasi agents engage in, paradoxically proposing social subversion without realizing they themselves would be susceptible to just that. And all it would take is one whistleblower with a conscience:
Under the title “Online Covert Action”, the document details a variety of means to engage in “influence and info ops” as well as “disruption and computer net attack”, while dissecting how human being can be manipulated using “leaders”, “trust, “obedience” and “compliance”:
The documents lay out theories of how humans interact with one another, particularly online, and then attempt to identify ways to influence the outcomes – or “game” it:
Greenwald's conclusion is spot on:
These agencies’ refusal to “comment on intelligence matters” – meaning: talk at all about anything and everything they do – is precisely why whistleblowing is so urgent, the journalism that supports it so clearly in the public interest, and the increasingly unhinged attacks by these agencies so easy to understand. Claims that government agencies are infiltrating online communities and engaging in “false flag operations” to discredit targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these documents leave no doubt they are doing precisely that.
Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.
So the next time you run into someone in a chat room or a message board who sounds just a little too much like a paid government subversive... it may not be just the paranoia speaking. For the full details "why not", read the formerly confidential slideshow below.
Apple’s Security Breach Should Scare You More Than Target’s Did
Apple’s security protocol breach is nearly as bad as handing your credit card straight to a hacker rather than making them steal the information through the magnetic stripe readers.
The flaw in Apple’s iOs and OS X platforms essentially allows a hacker to get in between the initial verification “handshake” connection between the user and the destination server, enabling the adversary to masquerade as a trusted endpoint. This means the connection which is supposed to be encrypted between you and your bank, email server, healthcare provider and more is open to attack.
Secure Sockets Layers, and more recently, Transport Layer Security protocols have protected web users for years by creating a digital secure handshake to identify and encrypt data from the browser to the secure end site. The Apple flaw puts hackers in the middle of that handshake, by allowing the SSL/TSL routines to be bypassed. (Photo credit: Shutterstock)
Security experts across the web recommend updating iPhones and iPads with the available iOS patches now, and using browsers other than Safari for OS X systems without an available Apple fix.
Usually to achieve encrypted web traffic, a handshake is accomplished through a Secure Sockets Layer — SSL for short — or more recently, Transport Layer Security, or TLS; both are Internet protocols that provide a secure channel between two machines operating over the Internet or an internal network.
The full severity of the security flaw has yet to surface, but the duplicated line of code which is causing all the ruckus has been in place since September 2012. This means theoretically that if you’ve been using the flawed iOS or OS X systems since then, a hacker on your shared network could have captured all your data that should have been SSL- or TSL-encrypted for the past 18 months.
Think of all the banking, online dating, email writing and Internet purchases you’ve made in the last year and a half.
The duplicated line of code that caused the Apple fail is shown here, and now dubbed on Twitter as #gotofail. (Image via Gizmodo)
The SSL/TLS effort requires nearly zero interaction from us — the users — but you may be familiar with the little lock icon that appears on the browser, indicating a secure connection has been achieved. This is where the Apple flaw comes in; anyone using the same network connection — the person sitting next to you at the coffee shop or at work right now — could fake the secure connection and intercept communication between your browser and a site.
Even worse, the flaw allows for modification of the “data in flight,” meaning a hacker could deliver exploits to take control of your system, according to Crowdstrike. And other applications that you may not immediately associate with Internet browsing are affected as well.
Ashkan Soltani points out the Calendar, Facetime, Keynote, Mail, Twitter, iBooks and other applications are just as vulnerable to the security flaw. (Image via Twitter)
Apple released a fix to the flaw housed in iOs 6 and 7 authentication logic, but the company only says the OS X fix is coming “very soon,” according to Reuters. This means Mac desktops and notebooks are still vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
Apple’s support page says the company will not “disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until a full investigation has occurred and any necessary patches or releases are available,” but describes the fail was addressed by “restoring missing validation steps.”
Apple did not immediately respond to TheBlaze for clarification on how soon fixes for Mac desktops and notebooks will be available.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
A Little Girls Potato Experiment Will Change The Way You Think About Food!
A little girl decided to do an experiment with a sweet potato, and her results will change the way you think about the fruits and vegetables you buy at the grocery store.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Obama To Unveil Treasury IRAs, Or Planning For A Post-Monetization World
Wondering who will take over the mantle of Treasury bond buyer now that the Fed is stepping away? Curious of the government's next steps towards repression and control of wealth? Wait no longer. As the AP reports, President Obama will unveil a new retirement savings plan tonight that allows first-time savers to buy US Treasury bonds tax-deferred for retirement. Of course, this is not the mandatory IRA that remains somewhat inevitable (as the muddle-through fails) but is certainly a step in the direction we alerted readers to a year ago by which the government generously offers to help manage your retirement savings. Two words spring to mind... remember Poland.
Eager not to be limited by legislative gridlock, Obama is also expected to announce executive actions on job training, retirement security and help for the long-term unemployed in finding work.
Among those actions is a new retirement savings plan geared toward workers whose employers don't currently offer such plans.
The program would allow first-time savers to start building up savings in Treasury bonds that eventually could be converted into a traditional IRAs, according to two people who have discussed the proposal with the administration. Those people weren't authorized to discuss it ahead of the announcement and insisted on anonymity.
Of course, this is not what the CFPB suggested a year ago... We're sure the government is just trying to protect your retirement account from terrorists. From Bloomberg:
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency’s first foray into consumer investments.
That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring and are interested in in terms of whether and what authority we have,” bureau director Richard Cordray said in an interview. He didn’t provide additional details.
The bureau’s core concern is that many Americans, notably those from the retiring Baby Boom generation, may fall prey to financial scams, according to three people briefed on the CFPB’s deliberations who asked not to be named because the matter is still under discussion.
But it's getting close.
Dead Sea Life Covers 98% of Ocean Floor After Fukushima
Sea life in the Pacific Ocean is dying off at an alarming rate, and the peak of all this death and destruction coincides with a certain nuclear disaster that ironically occurred on the Pacific coast of Japan. Still, scientists analyzing what’s referred to as “sea snot” point their finger at global warming, refusing to even mention the radiation from Fukushima. Normally, this snot covers about 1% of the floor. Now, it seems to be covering about 98% of it.
According to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, life at the sea floor 145 miles out from the California coast has been analyzed for a total of 24 years now. There, the researchers measure the amount of ‘sea snot’ on the ocean floor. Sea snot is the highly technical term they use to describe dead sea life including fish, plankton, feces, and other organic oceanic matter. As mentioned, this snot covers about 1% of the floor, but now it seems to be covering about 98% of it.
“In the 24 years of this study, the past two years have been the biggest amounts of this detritus by far,” said marine biologist Christine Huffard, who works at the research station off of California. Multiple other stations throughout the Pacific have seen similarly alarming increases.
Throughout the study and the National Geographic coverage of it, climate change is blamed. Never mind the fact that the astronomical increase in sea snot occurred in conjunction with the Fukushima nuclear disaster—they don’t even bother to mention that.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster occurred when an earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the area on March 11, 2011. To this day, the amount of damage is unclear as the Japanese government along with TEPCO (the power company that owns the nuclear power plant) seem to be content to hide the truth.
Measurements taken in March 2012 show sea snot levels to be at about 1%. Just a few months later, they had grown to 98%.
After 24 years of measuring the dead sea life and recognizing that global warming is a slow-moving and ongoing effect, the scientists would have us believe the “explosion” of sea snot that occurred in just a few months’ time was a normal effect of climate change. Yeah, right.
The sheer fact that the effects of Fukushima were not even considered make the study and its findings all the more suspicious. One would think if climate change could dramatically change the volume of sea snot in a few short months, it would have had other similarly troubling effects on other aspects of the environment during the same period—effects we would notice. But it didn’t. Fukushima did.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Apple Wants to Serve You Ads Using Mood-Reading Tech
Image via Flickr/Camillo Miller
While Google wants to get all up in your home appliances and your eyeballs, it looks like Apple’s pushing to get straight to the heart of their users. A patent application from the tech giant that was published today and picked up by Apple Insider describes a technology that would infer a user’s mood at any time in order to best serve them relevant ads.
It’s easy to hate. Sure it sounds like creepy mind-reading, but then so did predictive text when it first appeared. Hey, I still get freaked out when I look at a product on one site only to see it later pop up in an ad on another site (how did they know that’s the exact one I wanted?) But if we have to see ads—and they’re pretty useful if we want to get decent content for free—then they might as well be targeted to things we’re interested in.
That said, the patent doesn’t suggest what kind of different things people might be interested in when they’re feeling happy, or depressed, or angry, and that’s where things could get a bit weird. BGR suggested tongue-in-cheek that unhappy people could be targeted with anti-depressant ads, while Tech Crunch proposed ice cream and whiskey might do well among the recently heartbroken.
The whole system laid out in Apple’s patent application makes for pretty compelling reading, if you can get through the stilted language. After all, it’s one thing to target ads based on a user’s age, sex, location, interests and so on—those are hard facts that can usually be found out with a few seconds’ search. But to get in their heads and recognise their emotions at any particular time? That’s a different matter.
At one rather amusing point in the application (humour’s admittedly thin on the ground in patent documents), the applicant considers the potential of asking users what mood they’re in before showing them an ad, but soon dismisses that as a bad idea:
One way of accomplishing this could be to query the user regarding their current mood prior to selecting an item of invitational content. A targeted content delivery system can then select an item of invitational content based on the user's response. However, such an approach could quickly lead to user aggravation, and likely a majority of users reporting a similar mood.
Instead, it lays out technologies that could infer someone’s mood a little less directly. “Mood-associated characteristic data” could include “heart rate, blood pressure, music genre, sequence of apps launched, rate of UI interactions, etc.” Some of those make more sense when you think of Apple products—music data could be taken from iTunes so content delivery systems can get a heads-up when you’re cracking out the emo records, and app behaviour could be sourced from iPhone usage.
As for heart rate and blood pressure—and the patent application also mentions adrenaline, perspiration, and temperature—that clearly suggests a potential wearable tech element (and something more sophisticated than a mood ring). They could be tasks for the yet-to-materialize iWatch, BGR suggests. The documents also mention the possibility of a camera to recognise facial expressions.
That’s all very clever, but one major issue is that people present different moods in different ways. Therefore, the system would start by compiling one or more “baseline mood profiles” for individual users based on data collected over an initial period. Then, a variation from a person’s usual mood at any given time could be used to infer how they’re feeling at that point.
And in case tracking a person’s actual behaviour isn’t enough, the system could incorporate external events too. “For example, if a tragic event occurred, an inferred mood can be downgraded. In another example, if the day corresponds to a national holiday, an inferred mood can be elevated,” the patent suggests. “In yet another example, if the weather is particularly nice, an inferred mood can be elevated. Additional uses of user independent mood-associated data items are also possible."
Of course, this is just at the patent application stage, so we’re not likely to see it any time soon. Add to that the obvious privacy concerns of a company storing vast amounts of such highly personal data, as Apple Insider points out, and there’s clearly a lot of thought that would need to go into developing anything of the sort.
But put all the technologies mentioned in the paper together, and it’s a rather thrilling reminder of how emotionally intelligent computers could one day be.
The Arctic Apple: A GMO Fruit That Won’t Go Brown
It seems like a given: slice an apple in the morning and by lunchtime those slices will have turned a rusty brown. Most of us have learned to accept that nature comes with blemishes, but apples that brown may be a thing of the past if the U.S. Department of Agriculture gives its approval to the newest GMO on the block, the non-browning Arctic Apple.
Neal Carter is an orchardist in Summerland, British Columbia, and the president of Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF). He says his GM apple is at the forefront of a new wave in biotech: quality traits. “As a GMO apple this is ‘biotech light,’” says Carter. “This is a very innocuous intervention where we’ve used an apple’s own DNA to turn off the protein called polyphenol oxidase that makes it go brown.”
Carter feels sure his Arctic Apples will pass final approval by the USDA and go on to find success in both the bourgeoning pre-sliced apple market and in the fresh fruit aisles of grocery stores. The first batch of Arctic Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples made the rounds in consumer surveys last year, and Carter says that the response was overwhelmingly positive. According to the results, 80 percent of those who tried the GMO fruit would be willing to buy it if and when it’s made available.
The U.S. Apple Association (USApple) represents the apple industry on a national and international level. In a statement released this past July, it openly opposed deregulation of the Arctic Apple — but not due to concerns over safety and health.
“We don’t see that there’s any flaw in the technology as far as a safety issue,” Wendy Brannen, USApple’s director of consumer health and public relations, reiterated in a phone interview. What does concern her is how the public will react.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Wheaties cereal found to contain so many metal fragments that they can be levitated with magnets
A video demonstrating Wheaties flakes clinging to magnets has also been posted at YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2jFace9D7o
The metal bits are added to Wheaties cereal to enhance the nutritional profile and claim a higher iron content on the label, but lab director and food scientist Mike Adams is skeptical of the formulation. "Adding shards of metal to a cereal is not nutritionally equivalent to nutritive minerals formed during the growth of grain-producing plants," he explains. "Bioavailability is vastly different."
Adams believes adding metal fragments to a cereal mix in an effort to claim a higher nutritional content on the box is "inherently deceptive" and points out that the manufacturer, General Mills, has also sold other deceptively-labeled cereals such as "TOTAL Blueberry Pomegranate" which contains no blueberries nor pomegranates.
Here's the shocking video of Mike Adams revealing Wheaties to contain shards of metal fragments while being lifted by magnets:
And here are some of the microscopy photos showing metal fragments in the Wheaties cereal (look for the small metallic shapes)
About the Natural News Forensic Food Lab
The Natural News Forensic Food Lab routinely conducts scientific testing of consumer products in the public interest, using atomic spectroscopy, microscopy and ingredient identity testing to better inform the public about what they're eating. Results of all investigations are published at http://labs.naturalnews.comWednesday, January 22, 2014
Las Vegas Casinos jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon
Image credit: Miss Shari/Flickr
Less then a week after Bitcoin makes it’s presence in the professional sports market, the Cyrptocurrency is now showing face in Sin City.
Beginning on Wednesday, both the D and Golden Gate casinos in Las Vegas will be accepting Bitcoin as payment for goods and services.
There will be a total five locations within the casinos premises allowing payment in Bitcoin. Those locations include both hotel front desks, the D gift shop, American Coney Island and Joe Vicari’s Andiamo Italian Steakhouse.
Derek Stevens, co-owner of both casinos said in a statement that he is “proud that the D and Golden Gate will be the first casino properties to accept bitcoin.”
“We’re located in the growing high-tech sector of downtown Las Vegas, and like all things downtown, we’re quickly adaptive to new technology. The timing is right for us to launch this initiative, and I’m happy to be able to offer this to our customers.” Said Stevens.
Neither casino will be accepting the digital money for gambling purposes due to a Gaming Control Board decision to hold off on the currencies entrance into the gambling side of things.
Derek Stevens agrees with the Gaming Control Boards decision to keep Bitcoin away from gambling.
“I think it’s too early with the technology,” he told the Las Vegas Review. “We need a lot more information.”
This is yet another giant step forward for the young digital currency that is red hot as of late with its real world applications.
Besides making its way in with the Sacramento Kings basketball team, Bitcoin has also been recently accepted by retailer Overstock.com , travel site cheapair.com and gaming site Zynga.
Oxygen, Baking Soda, and Magnesium Cure with Dr. Mark Sircus
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Robots to Get Internet Cloud Brain: "Wikipedia For Robots"
Cloud Robotics
| The RoboEarth project aims to build a cloud computing platform for robotics. After four years of research, scientists at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Philips and four other European universities will present this online platform through which robots can learn new skills from each other worldwide. |
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new project aims to connect the world’s robots so they will be able to learn from each other and from their human interactions.
It is part to a €5.6m ($7.6m) European Union research project known as RoboEarth. The work is a collaboration between six European universities and Philips, the Dutch electronics company.
The project seeks to create robots’ very own cloud: a vast network, database and computation engine “where robots can share information and learn from each other about their behavior and their environment.”
RoboEarth, then, is cloud storage and computing for robots: its database is intended to store knowledge created by both humans and robots in a robot-readable open format. To date, that knowledge is basic: maps to help mobile robots navigate; task information like how to pick up a cup; and object-recognition data such as digital models of real-world objects.
The system also lets robots offload some of their computational tasks to “a powerful and secure” cloud-computing engine.
Most robots today perform discrete, pre-programmed tasks related to a small set of objects in a controlled environment. Some already use data-sharing systems, although almost all are proprietary. For example, the “autonomous robots” made by Kiva Systems, which is owned by online retailer Amazon, pool data about the constantly changing warehouses in which they operate, enabling them to navigate and work more efficiently.
The challenge, notes Markus Waibel of the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control in Zurich, and one of the scientists behind RoboEarth, is that the “nuanced and complicated” nature of life outside these controlled environments cannot be defined by a limited set of specifications. In other words, to perform complex and useful tasks in the unstructured world in which humans actually live, robots will need to share knowledge and learn from each other’s experiences. They will also have to learn patterns that humans take for granted. For example, milk is usually kept in a refrigerator; the strange objects next to plates are usually knives and forks; glass objects break easily; and so on. In short, they will have to evolve and adapt to the real world, and do so autonomously.
RoboEarth’s proof-of-concept demonstration is simple for humans, but hard for robots: serve fruit juice to a random patient in a hospital bed. In a fake hospital room at Eindhoven Technical University in the Netherlands, one robot mapped out the space, located the “patient’s” bed and a nearby carton of juice, then sent that data to RoboEarth’s cloud.
A second robot, accessing the data supplied by robot number one, unerringly picked up the juice and carried it to the bed. Unfortunately this test did not end in total success as Amigo then dropped the milk to the floor after delivering it to the bed-ridden patient.. But as Dr Waibel—who was the “patient” in question—points out, the demonstration still proved its point.
RoboEarth and a handful of similar initiatives, including Google’s cloud-robotics ROS platform, do, however, raise some questions.
As with many internet of things developments, security is variable, and physical machines that work alongside people in the real world will be tempting targets. Although RoboEarth’s cloud may itself be secure, it will take only one vulnerable node (robot) for hackers to gain control—a scary thought in a world where robots might be care-givers with access to private medical information and other personal data.
Lee Tien, a senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which seeks to protect individual rights in a digital world, worries that the fundamental requirements of projects such as RoboEarth—the collection, storage and sharing of as much data as possible—are at odds with the goal of “privacy by design” that many policymakers now support. If a robot is caring for a sick or elderly person, what happens if there is a family dispute over that care? Or a contentious divorce? Is all the robo-cloud data simply up for grabs by whomever manages to obtain or subpoena it? “The number of safeguards that will need to be put in place is staggering”, Tien told the Economist.
SOURCE Eindhoven Technical University
Monday, January 20, 2014
Saturday, January 18, 2014
ATM security alert as Microsoft prepares to kill off Windows XP
Cashpoints around the world could be left vulnerable to hacker attacks.
It is believed millions are still running Microsoft's Windows XP, first introduced 13 years ago.
However, on April 8th, Microsoft will stop issuing securoty updates, in a bid to get people to upgrade.
Bill Gates at the Microsoft XP launch in New York October 25, 2001: The firm will finally stop supporting the software on April 8th.
THE CASHPOINT OF THE FUTURE
Cumbersome and slow cash machines with clunky buttons and tiny hard-to-see screens could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a range of next-generation ATMs.
Ohio-based security firm Diebold has created a touchscreen cash machine that works like a tablet computer, uses facial recognition and QR codes to identify and authenticate users, and has built-in safety cameras.
German-based engineers at Wincor Nixdorf have developed a machine that remembers the user's withdrawal history to offer more personalised options.
The aging OS, which was replaced by Windows Vista in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009, Windows 8 in 2012 and Windows 8.1 in 2013.
Experts say many of the ATMs may have to be dumped, and that 95% of ATMs in use runs windows XP.
'My bank operates an ATM that looks like it must be 20 years old, and there’s no way that it can support Windows 7,' Suzanne Cluckey, the editor of ATM Marketplace, a news site that serves the industry, told Bloomberg.
'A lot of ATMs will have to either have their components upgraded or be discarded altogether and sold into the aftermarket—or just junked.'
although more modern ATMs are unaffected, there are fears older version could be left vulnerable
Experts say that as little as 15% of ATMs run on Windows 7, and warn the industry faces major problems.
Aravinda Korala, chief executive officer of ATM software provider KAL, says he expects only 15 percent of bank ATMs in the U.S. to be on Windows 7 by the April deadline.
'The ATM world is not really ready, and that’s not unusual,' he says.
'ATMs move more slowly than PCs.'
POISON IN PIZZA HUT CHEESE
Leprino Foods, the world's largest Italian cheese manufacturer, is the nearly exclusive supplier of Pizza Cheese to the 6000+ Pizza Hut restaurants in the U.S. To make money, Leprino Foods uses patented processes that add GMO food starch, plus large volumes of water and salt to so-called Pizza Cheese.
It gets much worse. Leprino Foods sprays Polydimethylsiloxane onto the "cheese". According to the original source for this information, this poison has not been approved as a food ingredient by the FDA. However, another site lists this as a food ingredient. Yet I do not recall reading this in the list of ingredients of anything from the supermarket. I believe that they add a whole lot of extra toxins in restaurant food that we never see, since they don't have to list the ingredients.
The levels are 90 X higher residue concentration than the FDA allows for use as a boiler water antifoaming agent!
Polydimethylsiloxane breaks down into formaldehyde when subjected to heat in excess of 150ºC. There is no safe level of formaldehyde.
In addition, as I tell people in "You're not fat, You're Toxic", you have the addition of glyphosate, the poison that is in Roundup, which comes from GMO plants fed to dairy cows (GMO corn, soy and alfalfa). That ends up in what little real cheese is in the cheese, as well as the meat.
Corporations don't care about you. Only you can care about you. Read the 55 easy-to-understand chapters in You're not fat, You're Toxic and save your looks, your health and your life.
Source: relfe.com