Get Me The Geeks!: “The increasingly complicated electronics our society relies on have given rise to the geeks - the essential technicians who set up our gadgets, including TVs, computers and hand-held devices. Steve Kroft reports.
(Via 60 Minutes: CBSNews.com.)
A Pill To Forget?: “Many of us would pay top dollar for a pill that would enhance our ability to remember. But Lesley Stahl found a scientist who is far more excited about a pill that promises to do exactly the opposite.
(Via 60 Minutes: CBSNews.com.)
France opens secret UFO files covering 50 years - Yahoo! News: “PARIS (AFP) - France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.
The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.
‘It is a world first,’ said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of ‘non-identified aerospatial phenomena.’
Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption.
‘Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper’ are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet.
But many others involving multiple sightings — in at least one case involving thousands of people across France — and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.”
[…] Other countries collect data more or less systematically about unidentified flying objects, notably in Britain and in the United States, where information can be requested on a case-by-case basis under the Freedom of Information Act. “But we decided to do it the other way around and made everything available to the public,” Patenet said. The aim was to make it easier for scientists and other UFO buffs to access the data for research. The website itself — which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic — is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports. To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr.
Basics: Guidelines for Using a Cellphone Abroad: “While Americans have embraced the convenience of using cellphones, trying to dial from overseas often brings surprises.”
(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)
Slashdot | First Photos of MIT $100 Laptop
An anonymous reader noted that MITs $100 laptop was unveiled at the Seven Countries Task Force Meeting. It runs a special version of the Fedora linux and it comes with native wireless lan support. You can see the photo album,
A little more background:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html
Some more recent info:
http://laptop.org/
The first working prototype of the $100 Laptop is unveiled at the Seven
Countries Task Force Meeting, 23 May 2006.
Pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pete/sets/72057594143224765/
Wired News: Why We Published the AT&T Docs
A file detailing aspects of AT&T’s alleged participation in the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic wiretap operation is sitting in a San Francisco courthouse. But the public cannot see it because, at AT&T’s insistence, it remains under seal in court records.
The judge in the case has so far denied requests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, and several news organizations to unseal the documents and make them public.
AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.
Based on what we’ve seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public’s right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T’s claims to secrecy.
As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF’s primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein — information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked “proprietary,” and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.
The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can’t be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents.
This week, we are joining in efforts to bring this evidence to light in its entirety.
USATODAY.com - NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added. (ed. Emphasis added)
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.
Legal Pad » Blog Archive » Phone Technician Suspected Illegal NSA Wiretap
Miles Ehrlich is no fan of Big Brother. Just a fewmonths after leaving government, the erstwhile chief of the SanFrancisco federal prosecutor’s white collar division - along with hispartner, Ismail Ramsey - has surfaced as the lawyer for a San Franciscoman who dropped what could be a big bomb in the ongoing governmentwiretapping scandal.
In a statement releasedThursday, their client, former AT&T technician Mark Klein, saysthat he witnessed the setup of a room in the phone company’s SanFrancisco office building that appeared to give the government accessto all AT&T telephone and Internet traffic - and not just theinternational calls that the government has admitted to eavesdroppingon.
“Based on my understanding of the connections andequipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting whatamounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing theInternet — whether that be peoples’ email, web surfing, or any otherdata,” Klein said.
In 2003, the National Security Agency set up asecret room inside the phone company’s San Francisco office buildingthat was not accessible to AT&T technicians, Klein said. There, aphone company worker hired by the NSA to handle the equipment set upequipment that apparently diverted communications to something called aSemantic Traffic Analyzer.
“The Narus STA technology is known to be usedparticularly by government intelligence agencies because of its abilityto sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammedtargets,” Klein said. “The company’s advertising boasts that itstechnology ‘captures comprehensive customer usage data … andtransforms it into actionable information. … [It] provides completevisibility for all Internet applications.’”
Stein says he learned that similar rooms were installed in Seattle, San Jose, L.A. and San Diego.
“Despite what we are hearing,and considering the public track record of this administration, Isimply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program isreally limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistentwith the NSA’s charter or with [the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAct].”
Klein’s statement is being incorporated into a class action filed inSan Francisco federal court, in which lawyers with the ElectronicFrontier Foundation, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins,and Traber & Voorhees in Pasadena claim that AT&T illegallyallowed the NSA taps.