Tag Archives: security

Boston: Nuke target and breakaway state capital

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In a bizarre piece of uncredited fiction at the Telegraph, the U.S. becomes a fascist police state, and Boston is targeted by a “false flag” terrorist attack set-up by the federal government.

I guess I should be glad I got my speeding ticket yesterday (on the Jamaicaway, and what a whopper it was).

Next time, the police might be permitted to open fire on any suspicious vehicle…

Cryptogon’s covering Operation Blackjack, and notes the striking use of symbology in the online comic:

Remember the Kingstar (controlled demolition company) van near the exploded bus on the 7/7 London bomings? That’s what came to mind for me.

Also, the ‘fictitious’ attack occurs during the Summer solstice. What’s the name on the side of the van? New Dawn Presentations. And its logo? That’s right, the Sun.

One other thing: All the cool kids know that the Illuminati are fascinated with Ferris wheels near bodies of water. (Look, don’t blame me, I just work here.)

via cryptogon.com » Archives » Operation Blackjack: The Story of Terrorist Nuclear Attacks on Major Western Cities.

Kill your phone

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Apple and Google aim to track users’ phones with GPS and W-Fi trangulation.

Photo: CC/husin.sani

Google’s new service, Latitude, lets people spy on each other, by tracking their target’ GPS receivers. Now Apple is rumored to be adding Wi-Fi triangulation to the Mac OS.

OS X Snow Leopard to get WiFi triangulation, more multitouch control? – SlashGear

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard could introduce WiFi triangulation, used to estimate geographical location, in a crossover of the technology from the iPhone to the MacBook range. The system- which is part of the CoreLocation framework in the iPhone SDK – will presumably be used to give general location information to navigation software such as Google Maps, as the first-generation iPhone did to compensate for its lack of true GPS.

Who is watching…

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those who watch the watchers?

Does the thought of your face being photographed while you stare at an ad make you queasy? TruMedia says not to worry, because its software sorts images in real time and besides, it’s the company’s policy to store nothing, not even when advertisers have asked that it do so. “If you want to do surveillance, you need to put your own camera,” Wilf says. Besides, he says, the software isn’t sophisticated enough to recognize specific facial features. “We don’t have a database of people, and we don’t attempt to identify people. If you take one of our boxes home from a mall, you will find nothing there.”

via IEEE Spectrum: Loser: The Ads Have Eyes.

Google + P&G = RFID + data mining

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Parallelnormal is not encouraged by the companies’ new innovation-idea-swapping agreement.

All in it together. CC/Kenneth Lu

This item (excerpt, link, below) is about more than a cross-cultural exchange between two of the largest data-gathering giants on Earth.

I say, welcome to the Internet of Things. P&G wants all of its goods to bear RFID tags, which for the first time will match each of us to the individual items we purchase with credit or customer loyalty cards.

Google is also already in the locative business, through Google Flu Trends, and as the co-investor (with former CIA, Bechtel and Bin Laden family officials) in a company deploying a wireless grid over San Francisco.

Now, imagine a search engine, accessible to government agencies only, which could light-up a Google Earth map with everything you ever paid for, anywhere on the planet.

At Procter & Gamble Co., the corporate culture is so rigid, employees jokingly call themselves “Proctoids.” In contrast, Google Inc. staffers are urged to wander the halls on company-provided scooters and brainstorm on public whiteboards.

Now, this odd couple thinks they have something to gain from one another — so they’ve started swapping employees. So far, about two-dozen staffers from the two companies have spent weeks dipping into each other’s staff training programs and sitting in on meetings where business plans get hammered out. The initiative has drawn little notice. Previously, neither company had granted this kind of access to outsiders.

via Media Info Center

Social networkers: Don't be suckers

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The more you play, the more they pry

Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

A warning to all you social networking, or “Web 2.0″, junkies out there: This kid (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg) and his coding pals are not your friends. Photo: “Scott Beale / Laughing Squid,” at laughingsquid.com. – mb

Practically all of the stupid games, quizzes, widgets and apps used by Facebook social networkers scoop-up more personal data than they need, and keep that data longer than they should, without notifying users.

A University of Virginia study found recently that 90 percent of the most popular apps (UVa looked at 150 of them) rip-off Facebookers’ personal data.

Here’s a link and excerpt to some recent coverage of the case study’s release:

Privacy Lives » Blog Archive » Social Networking Sites’ Applications Gather Users’ Personal Data
“Facebook fanatics who have covered their profiles on the popular social networking site with silly games and quirky trivia quizzes may be unknowingly giving a host of strangers an intimate peek at their lives,” reports the Washington Post. A couple of weeks ago, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (“CIPPIC”) filed a complaint (pdf) against Facebook alleging 22 violations of Canadian law (which I blogged about here). The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has launched an investigation. The BBC discusses security vulnerabilities in these applications here. CNet News and others have reported on the problems surrounding this kind of data-gathering from social networking sites and third-party application creators.

Food Revolution 2030

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The food riots anticipated by military experts have already started. Now the Royal Institute for International Affairs is talking revolution, as a way to approach world hunger.

The Royal Institute for International Affairs is calling for something “close to a revolution” in agricultural efforts to meet the world’s hunger for food by 2030. A report from Chatham House (link, below), says we may already be at a point where a global middle class of fatties is taking food from the mouths of the poor.

Chatham House – Publications – Reports and Papers – View Paper
In the longer term, the key challenge is to increase the supply of food: the World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise by 50 per cent by 2030, as a result of rising affluence and growing world population. Achieving this challenge will require something close to a revolution, and a massive investment in agriculture in developing countries.

CCTVs don't cut crime

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They were supposed to fight crime–the ubiquitous cameras, which in London appear to be on every lamppost and crossing signal. But the billions the police have spent creating an all-seeing eye are proving worthless.

The police are building a database of CCTV images, however (see excerpt, below), which might have been their plan in the first place.

CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police | UK news | The Guardian
A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.

Spy watch for insta-DNA testing?

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Parallelnormal is back on-line after a recent “health scare.” Please keep your comments and feedback coming! — mb

Scientists in authoritarian-ruled Singapore say they’ve developed a DNA identification assay-on-a-chip that also preps a drop of blood for sampling. This means any one of us might be just a pinprick away from being instantly Identified as a threat. (The watch, below, is one possible form-factor for the DNA tester.)

Wiley

From the Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology:

…a rapid test for genetic diagnosis that combines the preparation of biological samples with a polymerase chain reaction PCR on one chip. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the “laboratory device” for all steps in this system is a single drop containing magnetic nanoparticles, which is moved across the chip by a magnetic field.

Super RFID tags might "Impinj" on privacy

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Impinj, an RFID chip maker with a provocative name has developed a new chip that requires very little energy to be activated by a remote reader. (Image: from the Impinj website.)

The chip, called Monza, has a read range 40 percent greater than most currently used to track people and consumer goods

In other words, Monza chips can be read at distances beyond forty feet, conceivably making it easier for spies with handheld readers to hide around corners, or distances up to a quarter of a block away from their targets.

Low-cost RFIDs are called passive, because they draw power from the “read” signal from a reader device.

Impinj says the chips, which overcome water, metal and other RF-disrupting materials, are suitable for tagging individual store items. That will turn a can of Coke, a pack of smokes, into a tracking device.

RFID Journal – - RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Technology News & Features
March 27, 2008—With an eye toward supporting the tagging of products at the item level and at the point of manufacture, RFID chipmaker Impinj unveiled today a new version of its Monza chip made for passive UHF, EPC Gen 2 tags. Called the Monza 3, the chip is significantly more sensitive to radio frequency signals than leading Gen 2 chips from other manufacturers, as well as the currently available Monza 2 chip, which Impinj released in 2006, says Impinj president and CEO Bill Colleran, adding that this increase in sensitivity should translate into better-performing RFID tags.

Royal Institute mulls a "world without rules"

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(Outside Chatham House, the home of the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Image: Chatham House website)

NATO, Britain, India and global business leaders will meet at Chatham House next week will discuss the “new (global) economic order,” dominated by the BRIIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and Indonesia). Journalists at the event must observe the Chatham House Rule, which prohibits them from quoting any participant by name. — mb

Chatham House – Events – Conferences – View Conference Details
Are the rules of the game changing as the balance of the global economy shifts from Europe and the USA to include India, China, Russia and others?

At The New Politics of the Global Economy: a world without rules?, leading thinkers from governments, international organisations and corporates globally will discuss:

* the impact of changes in the global economy on investment, trade, and the environmental framework
* whether new rules will operate across borders
* the global security issues raised by the interdependencies of this new economic order
* the business strategies that will succeed in this new environment.