Looks like Bin Laden won . Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s watching and laughing: Two Senators have been warning for months that the government has a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act so broad that it amounts to an entirely different law — one that gives the feds massive domestic surveillance powers, and keeps the rest of us in the dark about the snooping. “There is a significant discrepancy between what most Americans – including many members of Congress – think the Patriot Act allows the government to do and how government officials interpret that same law,” wrote the Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. “We believe that most members of the American public would be very surprised to learn how federal surveillance law is being interpreted in secret. ” The Senators tried to get the government to reveal some of the law’s contents , by forcing the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to produce a report outlining when this secret surveillance has gone overboard. Yesterday, the effort failed. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said no to the report by rejecting Wyden and Udall’s amendment to the FY2012 Intelligence Authorization Act. In other words: we are all still in the dark about how the government is spying on us.The Senators won’t say, exactly, what elements of this secret Patriot Act have them so spooked. But Wyden told Danger Room in May that the so-called “business-records provision” is a major source of concern. It empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation. So instead, the Senators are left to make vague — if vociferous — protests. “In our view, the executive branch’s decision to conceal the U.S. government’s official understanding of what this law means is unacceptable, and untenable in the long run,” Wyden and Udall wrote in the committee’s report on the Authorization Act . “Intelligence agencies need to have the ability to conduct secret operations, but they should not be allowed to rely on secret laws.” Just a few weeks ago, Microsoft admitted that data stored in the European-based cloud were still subject to access by the U.S. government under the Patriot Act.
Continue reading …Archeologists eschewing traditional whip / leather jacket combo for Kinect controllers
August 3, 2011 No Comment
The latest must-have piece of technology in the archeological world? The Kinect. Students from the University of California, San Diego are taking Microsoft’s much-hacked peripheral on an archeological dig in Jordan, using the device to help create 3D scans of the site on the cheap. The hack pulls data captured by the Kinect’s camera and infrared scanner, turning the information into avatars that can be plugged into virtual worlds. The hack’s creator is hoping that it might some day be able to capture information as complex as a buildings or neighborhoods. The first, decidedly less ambitious application is being referred to as “ArKinect,” because what’s a cool hack without a cool name? Continue reading Archeologists eschewing traditional whip / leather jacket combo for Kinect controllers Archeologists eschewing traditional whip / leather jacket combo for Kinect controllers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …It’s not all summer holidays with the Queen and royal tours of California : The Duchess of Cambridge also has to deal with the possibility that she’ll be kidnapped. As such, Kate recently went through a personal protection program run by members of the Special Air Service, Scotland Yard’s personal protection…
Continue reading …Marla Cooper (yes, Cooper) says she knows the true identity of “skyjacker” DB Cooper: His name was Lynn Doyle Cooper, known to family members as LD, and he was her uncle, Marla tells ABC News . She recalls a suspicious conversation between LD and another uncle she overheard as an 8-year-old…
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And you thought space was the final frontier. Turns out that this brave new world we’re always hearing so much about is actually in Jordan. The reason? King Abdullah II is a massive Star Trek fan and in 2014, a theme park called the Red Sea Astrarium, which is based on the cult show (though
Continue reading …Stocks kept on sliding this morning, after a better-than-expected labor report failed to reassure investors. Private employers added 114,000 jobs in July according to ADP, yet as of 11:18, the Dow was down 102 points, according to MarketWatch, with the S&P down 7.46 points and the Nasdaq…
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All eyes turn to US employment figures due out on Friday after Dow narrowly avoids ninth day in red It hasn’t happened since Jimmy Carter was in the White House and Abba ruled the charts. But US stock markets threatened to end trading down for the ninth day in a row, as worries about the state of the world’s largest economy continued to terrify the financial markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Wall Street index of leading US companies, was down more than 100 points at lunchtime and set to continue a losing streak that has lasted even longer than the trough in October 2008 after Lehman Brothers went bust and the global financial crisis began. In the event a last minute rally helped it narrowly avoid the ignominious record. After Lehman collapsed, the Dow fell for eight days in a row, but with investors worried about weakening economies in the US and Europe and political uncertainty in Washington and abroad, the Dow was on course on Wednesday to clock up a ninth day in the red – a run unseen since 22 February 1978, when the US was suffering a recession, an energy crisis and sky-high inflation. The comparison will be an uncomfortable one for Barack Obama. Some of his critics have taken to drawing parallels with Carter, whose one-term presidency was handicapped by financial crisis. Paul Dales, senior US economist at Capital Economics, said investors had already assumed a deal would be done, and that markets were being driven lower by fears that the economy is again weakening. “Now that the debt deal is done, people are focussing their attention on the economy, and the recent figures have been disappointing,” he said. Recent reports on gross domestic product and consumer spending had all been poor, he said. “The fundamentals are weak. It’s all about the economic data,” he said. Dales said all eyes were now on US employment figures due out on Friday. He said those numbers would be “pivotal”. “If those are weak then this slide will continue; if the numbers are strong, then it could ease fears,” he said. The US news and Europe’s continuing debt crisis spooked investors around the world. In London, the FTSE 100 dropped 2.3% to close at its lowest point since November last year, and markets in France and Germany suffered similar falls. Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Harris Private Bank in Chicago, said: “Investors no longer believe we can rely on Washington to cushion the blow. We have had 30 years of [Federal Reserve chairmen] Greenspan and Bernanke cutting interest rates when the economy looked soft. Now the government is spending to create jobs, and it’s not working. Now we are in a situation where we have to let the chips fall where they may. That’s a very daunting prospect.” US economy United States Dow Jones Stock markets Global economy Economics Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Research in Motion rolled out three long-delayed new BlackBerry devices today that it hopes will stem its slide toward irrelevancy. All three devices run on the BlackBerry 7 OS, and all sport touch screens. The flashiest offering may be the Torch 9850/9860, RIM’s first all-touch screen BlackBerry, but there’s also…
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An Australian bomb squad safely freed a teenager trapped near a suspicious device for 10 hours, setting off mysteries as to who put the device in the young woman’s Sydney home and why. (Aug. 3)
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Ah, Autumn, my favorite season. The temperature drops to a pleasant cool; warm apple cider is served all over the countryside; and the leaves on the trees change colors almost as rapidly as the supposed release date for the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5, we were told, was definitely coming in September. The Wall Street Journal had sources saying September, as did John Paczkowski of All Things Digital, as did Boy Genius Report, as did 9to5MacRumors. Basically, a lot of people close to Apple — suppliers, parts makers, AT&T employees, etc. — assured a lot of bloggers that September 2011 was the month of the launch. “Yes,” all of these informants nodded in anonymous unison, “It certainly looks like September 2011.” Which is why I’m going to bet it will be a little frustrating for you all to hear that the latest rumors have the iPhone 5 coming out in October. YES, THAT’S RIGHT: OCTOBER … WAIT, OCTOBER? John Paczkowski of All Things Digital was the first writer to predict, all the way back in April, that the iPhone 5 would be released in September. He is now also the first writer to predict, all the way back on Monday, that the September reports are “wrong,” and that October is now the month. Boy Genius Report, meanwhile, joined the October crowd in part, saying to expect the new iPhone on October 1 — in Canada. They stand by their original claim that the iPhone 5 will be out in the United States in September, while Gizmodo sourced an anonymous tipster working for AT&T who told them that AT&T retail employees were banned from taking vacation during the last two weeks of September, which of course can only mean that the iPhone 5 will be released late in that month. Paczkowski responds to this tipster in his most recent post, saying that his Apple source told him that Gizmodo’s AT&T source was incorrect, and that if AT&T employees really were forbidden from vacation in the last two weeks in September, then it wasn’t because of an iPhone 5 release. Oy. Vey. As iTunes-approved punk rockers Green Day sang, wake me up when September ends. It’s a lot of work wading through all of this Dookie. Despite a lot of white noise, we are essentially no closer to knowing the release date of the iPhone 5, as Apple spokespeople aren’t confirming or acknowledging any of it. WHICH IS TOO BAD, BECAUSE PEOPLE REALLY, REALLY WANT ONE What we do know about the iPhone 5 is that consumers are incredibly, some might say irrationally, excited for it. A recent survey by online shopping store PriceGrabber showed that one-third of Americans are going to buy the next iPhone, no matter what it looks like or how it is upgraded. And according to an unrelated survey by consulting firm Piper Jaffray, Verizon users aren’t going to buy a new iPhone until it’s a new iPhone — that is, an iPhone 5, or an update to the iPhone 4. Target and Radio Shack fueled the crazy iPhone 5 speculation by cutting prices on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS in an apparent inventory cleaning, and 9to5Mac reported that the 3GS might be discontinued as soon as the iPhone 5 is inevitably available. AND WHAT, MIGHT YOU ASK, IS THIS iPHONE 5 GOING TO LOOK LIKE? While we don’t know much about the newest iPhone beyond the fact that it exists (prototypes have been shipped out to English carriers, according to The Guardian tech blog), we do have a whole mess of rumors that we can wade through. We already told you about the reports of the stronger rear-facing camera and the slimmer and thinner body; since then, even more anonymous tipsters and supposed spottings-in-the-wild have come forward. For grainy pictures of what may be the iPhone 5 being tested out by developers and carriers, you have to do some Web-hopping. A Vietnamese blogger claims to have a white iPhone 4s — a cheaper version of the iPhone 5 to be released simultaneously with its more expensive cousin — which he said (according to Google translate) runs faster, has a wider screen, and has a plastic rather than a glass screen. On the other side of the world, 9to5Mac has a picture snapped on a train in San Francisco, apparently of an Apple employee playing with his new unreleased iPhone, with wider screen, thinner back and more rounded edges than the iPhone 4. This squares (no pun intended) with the Nickelodeon-Gak green iPhone 5 covers 9to5mac thought they had found in — well, somewhere in Asia. And hey, speaking of Asia: Despite the iPhone 5 not yet being released anywhere, the knock-offs are already out there! Photos and video of a fake iPhone 5 made in a factory in Shenzhen have been circulating lately, thanks to the tech blog Gizchina. And since Apple phones are built in Shenzhen, China, who better to design a perfect replica of the phone than citizens of Shenzhen themselves? The “iPhoney” is thinner than the iPhone 4 and has the rounded glass that 9to5mac’s covers hinted at, but, unfortunately, it’s not an exact replication, as it only costs $108, which I think we all know won’t be the case for the iPhone 5. Shaw Wu, an Apple analyst with financial services firm Sterne Agee, meanwhile, added that the next-generation iPhone will be thinner and have a wider display, and will not run on 4G. So there’s that, too. WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS Whether the new iPhone is wider, thinner, fatter, or shaped like an octagon, or whether it is released in September, October, November, or Decembruary, is still anyone’s guess. Most people are still pegging an official announcement to Apple’s annual Fall Media Conference (the first week in September), so we will only have to deal with this rampant, sometimes silly, speculation for another month or so. Though there is not much agreement on what the iPhone will look like or when it will be available in America or elsewhere, one thing remains consistent: The Apple hype-machine keeps rolling its sleek white tires, riding silently as ever toward that announcement in September. Or October.
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