The Department of Homeland Security has announced the cancellation of a program that had drawn the ire of privacy advocates nationwide.
Homeland Security Secretary ordered the immediate end to a plan by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to collect data on all license plates in the United States and storing them in a massive database.
ICE officials has claimed in their initial request for proposals that the collection of the plates would help law enforcement be able to find and track fugitives. The database would also be used to help track down immigrants in the country illegally.
“The solicitation, which was posted without the awareness of ICE leadership, has been cancelled,” ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in prepared statement. “While we continue to support a wide range of technologies to help meet our law enforcement mission, this solicitation will be reviewed to ensure the path forward appropriately meets our operational needs.”
Members of Congress reacted swiftly to the announcement in praising the withdrawal of the proposed program but wondered how something like this could be made public without the knowledge of those in charge of ICE.
A new organization wants you to be able to check your e-mail in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest or the deserts of Africa.
A group calling themselves the Media Development Investment Fund is creating something called Outernet, which involves hundreds of mini-satellites that would orbit earth and provide Wi-Fi to the entire planet.
The MDIF says that the new technology would allow free press and information to flow into countries that block internet access to citizens like China and North Korea. Currently about 60% of the planet has access to the internet mostly because poor areas of the world lack the infrastructure necessary to sustain signal.
The company plans to ask NASA to run tests of their service from the International Space Station in September 2014. If the tests from the ISS are successful, the company believes they can begin Outernet by June 2015.
The service will not be like traditional internet service in that the user can go to any website but the service will be much like satellite TV in that it will provide a menu of websites for users visit.
Personal liberty watchdogs are concerned about a bill working through the California legislature that would require all cell phones to have a “kill switch” that can be activated by law enforcement.
Proponents of the bill say it would allow police or cell phone owners to shut off a device that is stolen so it cannot be used or resold by a thief.
However, critics say that the device could actually be used by authorities as a way to keep citizens from being able to communicate with each other in a time of crisis or as a way to quell dissent in a community.
For example, if police are caught abusing their authority, the police could activate the kill switches to destroy the phones and remove any video evidence of the abuse. It could also stop live streaming of any event authorities do not want to have publicized.
Wireless cell phone manufacturers and carriers have opposed similar measures in other states.
The man who stole classified information from the National Security Agency and then fled the country to avoid prosecution for his actions is now an official nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Two members of the Norwegian government nominated Edward Snowden.
Baard Vegard Solhjell, a former environment minister, and Snorre Valen released publicly their nomination for Snowden. They claimed that Snowden’s release of the classified NSA actions “has contributed to a more stable and peaceful world order.”
The members of the Nobel panel do not confirm nominees but people who make nominations are permitted to release the information to the public.
The nomination comes a few days after Snowden released new documents showing that the NSA and their British counterparts were doing real time spying on use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
If you thought your cell phone, laptop or other electronics were draining faster than usual during the unusual bitter cold, you’re not wrong.
Electronic experts say the bitter cold drains batteries faster so people who depend on their cell phones in remote locations need to make sure they recharge often and have chargers in their car in the event of an emergency.
One computer expert said that Apple computers are especially vulnerable to the cold.
“Apple is rated from I believe 32 degrees to roughly 95 degrees,” David Greer of Digital Doc told CBS. “Samsung is rated from minus, negative 4 to up to 128.”
Greer also warned of the importance of not trying to rapidly heat your phone or computer if it’s cold. Greer said you risk major damage to the devices if you do not allow them to slowly reach room temperature.
He suggests making sure you keep your phone in a jacket or close to your body to keep it warm.
Scientists at Stanford University and MIT have found a new way to predict earthquakes and possible damage in areas where seismologists have struggled with oceans causing small seismic waves.
The scientists have developed a way to use ocean waves as a model for earthquakes and its impact on different types of soil.
The study says that Los Angeles is very vulnerable to a large quake from the San Andreas Fault.
The study shows that because the city sits on what’s called a ”sedimentary basin” shock waves from quakes could be magnified as much as three times their usual level. A sedimentary basin is softer, sandier dirt surrounded by a ring of rock. The waves would bounce off the rock and increase in magnitude.
One member of the scientific team said it was similar to a large bathtub full of water. If you shake the tub, the tub does not shake much but the water within violently shakes along with anything on top of it.
The study says the new system will allow scientists to test the impact of an earthquake on buildings in areas that have not experienced an earthquake for many years.
Want to spy on your neighbor? Want to see where your spouse goes in the afternoon? Want to peer in on the meeting at church you weren’t invited to?
Starting in June, you could spy on all of those with a personal drone you can carry in your pocket and have airborne and spying on someone within 20 seconds.
The “Pocket Drone” by AirDroids was seeking $35,000 from the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to launch their company. With 45 days left in their funding campaign, the company has raised $365,000 from over 800 backers seeking to get their hands on a personal spy craft.
The craft will be remote controlled either with a specialized controller or from a laptop, desktop or smartphone using the Android operating system. While the system only allows for 20 minute flights before needed a recharge, it can capture hundreds of photographs in that short time.
The system will also allow users to have a “follow me” mode where a mobile device with GPS can be tracked by the drone. If the user can hack a subject’s phone, they can program the drone or series of drones to follow a target.
The drone could also be used for real-time video surveillance.
The National Security Agency reportedly has been collecting up to 200 million text messages a day from around the world.
The NSA has used the data to track locations, contact names and numbers and details of credit cards. The program, codenamed Dishfire, collections information from phones en masse and is not targeted only at subjects of surveillance.
The information was released by fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden to Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
The presentation from 2011 on the program was subtitled “SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit.” The report claims that numbers from the United States were “minimized” from the database but confirmed numbers from citizens in Great Britain were used in the tracking.
Mobile phone companies in Europe immediately protested the actions of the NSA in spying on their customers.
Google has put on display a prototype of a contact lens that could be used by diabetics to monitor their disease.
The lens contains a miniaturized glucose sensor and wireless chip. The lens would continually monitor glucose levels in tears and report the information to a computer or smartphone.
Google says the lens will be a lot less intrusive for measuring glucose levels than pricking fingers for blood tests.
“We wondered if miniaturized electronics — think chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair — might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy,” Google said in its press release. “We hope a tiny, super sensitive glucose sensor embedded in a contact lens could be the first step in showing how to measure glucose through tears, which in the past has only been theoretically possible.”
The unit is reportedly powered by radio waves.
