Last week, DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen celebrated US independence by publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post calling on Congress to pass an Orwellian surveillance law. The measure, Senator Ron Johnson’s “S.2836 – Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018,” would enable the government to arbitrarily shoot down drones, and wiretap communications without warrants. The bill was heard before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which reported it out of committee favorably in mid-June. In a letter to lawmakers, the ACLU called the proposal “an enormous unchecked grant of authority to the government to forcefully remove drones from the sky in nebulous security circumstances.” It must be stopped.

A new report from West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center explained how Islamic State build its drone fleet on the cheap and also the fascinating story of its complicated supply chain. “The program appears to have been shaped by two Bangladeshi brothers who leveraged companies in the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, and Spain,” the report said. The brothers created a number of shell companies to order the drones and ship them to Islamic State’s various affiliates across the world.

At the peak of the drone attacks in the spring of 2017, coalition forces were working to pry Mosul out of the hands of the Islamic State in northern Iraq. At the time, the Islamic State was conducting between 60 and 100 drone powered bombing runs a month. A member of the Syrian Defense Forces told a journalist for France 24 in Raqqa that his supply lines were being attacked 15 to 16 times daily.

Scientists test new chemical compounds on animals because we still don’t completely understand the world around us. New compounds might interact with living cells in unexpected ways, causing unforeseen harm.

But an artificial intelligence system published in the research journal Toxicological Sciences shows that it might be possible to automate some tests using the knowledge about chemical interactions we already have. The AI was trained to predict how toxic tens of thousands of unknown chemicals could be, based on previous animal tests, and the algorithm’s results were shown to be as accurate as live animal tests.

The algorithm can predict results from nine different tests, from skin corrosion to eye irritation, which authors say comprised 57% of all animal testing done in the EU in 2011.

BREAKING: Grand jury has returned an indictment against 12 members of Russian intelligence, charged with hacking into the DCCC, DNC, and Hillary Clinton's campaign, and orchestrating the release of documents to interfere with the 2016 election.

Beleaguered social media giant Facebook has removed "treason" from their database of the keywords assigned to users for advertising purposes, the company stated Wednesday after Danish state broadcaster DR reported its existence.

Company spokesman Joe Osborne replied "National treason was an advertising interest because of its historical significance, but as it is an illegal act, we have removed it."

Facebook tags its more than 2 billion users with a wide variety of keywords depending on their interests - from shopping habits to political and religious views in order to sell more efficiently targeted advertising.

This makes Facebook a sublime sales channel for companies. Categorizing users in areas of interest means that companies with ads on Facebook can buy into an almost perfect audience. Eg. garden equipment for people with special interest in gardens, etc.

But categorization also allows intelligence services in all countries to look at the population over the shoulder.

It has emerged that Facebook used a "treason" tag to mark some of its users. When Danish media reported that FB had since discontinued the label, it also decided to single out only ‘evil Russians’ as possible abusers of the data.

The US social media giant effectively labeled tens of thousands of people all over the world as "interested in treason" for the sake of … advertising, Danish public-service broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR) reported on Wednesday, explaining that "treason" was one of the tags used by Facebook's automatic algorithm to identify, for advertisers, its users' interests.

It is unclear how long the social network had been using the controversial tag as well as how many users were affected by it. However, when the Danish media contacted Facebook to draw its attention to the disturbing discovery, the US company promptly admitted that the tag was "troubling" and proudly said as it already deleted it a week ago.

Right Wing Watch, a left-wing nonprofit aimed at exposing the “extreme agenda” of conservatives, owns a YouTube channel that consists entirely of other people’s videos, yet after several copyright disputes, YouTube has yet to delete the channel.

The nonprofit is owned by People For the American Way, which is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Initiative. The Daily Caller News Foundation review of the Right Watch’s channel found that of the almost 450 videos, not one of them appears to be its own original video.

This by itself would not be a problem if Right Wing Watch provided commentary to the clips they upload, but the channel is completely void of it. The videos are simply clips of other, many times copyrighted, videos.

Videos Right Wing Watch often re-uploads include from channels like Fox News, InfoWars, small Catholic television networks, and various popular conservative personalities on YouTube.

A scuba diver was stunned to make an unexpected find at the bottom of the sea - when an iPhone lit up when it received a text.

Incredibly the device still had more than 80% of its charge, despite being dropped to the seabed two days earlier.

It has now been reunited with its Canadian owner after it was dropped by a kayaker close to the coast in Dorset.

Cerys Hearsey's attention was drawn to the phone when she noticed a flash of light on the seabed about 30ft down.

It was in a waterproof case and still had 84% battery life.

The hype about artificial intelligence (AI) and its cousins Big Data and Machine Learning is ubiquitous, and largely unexamined. AI is going to change the world by freeing humankind from most of its labors, etc. etc. etc.

Let's start by asking: who owns all this AI? This raises two other questions:who benefits as "software eats the world" (to use Marc Andreesen's pithy phrase), and to what purpose is all this technology being applied?

The answers are painfully obvious: large global corporations, many of which function as quasi-monopolies (Facebook, Google et al.), are the owners of these new technologies, and the purpose being pursued is to maximize profits and secure a monopoly that insures high profits into the future.

The hype takes two predictable pathways, one Jetson-cartoonish euphoria and the other dystopian ruin. Self-driving vehicles will change the world in wonderful ways by eliminating the source of accidents: human error.

Sensitive military documents have been put up for sale in online hacking forums after someone forgot to change a default password, according to a security firm that discovered the breach.
Documents for sale include maintenance manuals for servicing MQ-9 Reaper drones, training manuals describing deployment tactics for improvised explosive devices (IEDs), documents detailing tank platoon tactics and an M1 ABRAMS tank operation manual, Bleeping Computer reported.

Security firm Recorded Future discovered the documents for sale online and said the hacker who stole them was selling the information for the surprisingly low bargain price of between $150 and $200.

Road signs that know when a mobile phone is being used in a moving vehicle are being installed in Norfolk, in a bid to tackle usage behind the wheel.

The system, which can tell the difference between active phone calls and other activities based on the strength of a signal and how long it lasts, flashes up a red warning signal to drivers when it detects a call.

The technology cannot yet log number plates or be used to help catch offending drivers, but it is hoped it will act as a deterrent.

In 2016, Amazon Web Services released Rekognition, a service that lets users analyze digital imagery in order to identify objects, including faces, based on a machine-learning algorithm.

The company has touted uses for this product that include identifying triggering content in images, determining emotions in an image, cashier-less grocery stores (which they have implemented in Amazon Go) — and, most worrisome, “public safety.”

The implications of this technology are eerily dystopian. The software is designed to identify up to 100 faces in an image or video, and can identify the emotions and actions of subjects. In the hands of the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the National Security Agency (NSA), this poses an existential risk to privacy, oppressed groups, left organizations and any other targeted person.

In addition to the mountain of much-discussed reasons the American public should be alarmed by President Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh—from his anti-abortion views to his past opinions favoring the interests of big polluters—advocacy groups are warning that the 53-year-old judge's established record of hostility to net neutrality and support for mass surveillance shows that his confirmation would spell "disaster for internet freedom."

"Trump's SCOTUS pick Brett Kavanaugh is an enemy of net neutrality and has sided with big cable companies in the lower courts," noted Demand Progress on Twitter following Trump's official selection of Kavanaugh Monday night, citing his previous argument that net neutrality rules violate the free speech of internet service providers.

Viewing terrorist content online more than three times will become a terrorist offence under the new Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill.

This is designed to address a loophole in the law which saw people stream terrorist material on websites such as YouTube without storing it on their own devices.

However the new law could criminalise academics and journalists "as well as those with inquisitive or even foolish minds", a parliamentary committee has warned.

Since robots first taking over industrial manufacturing, people have worried that they’ll replace us. But now, with the explosion of artificial intelligence applications, our jobs are more under threat than ever before.

Automated technology monitors and control production and manufacturing. Drones and driverless cars are taking over transportation and delivery services. Artificial intelligence acts as a personal assistant within our phones and devices, and controls smart home automation with the internet of things.

By 2030, between 75 million and 375 millions could be automated. As automation takes away the jobs of up to 14% of the workforce, and consolidates resources, massive economic inequality could result.

A group of researchers and students at MIT have developed an intelligent radar-like technology that makes it possible to see through walls to track people as they move around, a development that could prove useful for monitoring the elderly or sick as well as for other applications — but that also raises privacy concerns.

Tests show that the technology, known as RF-Pose, can reveal whether someone is walking, sitting, standing or even waving — and can identify individuals from a known group with a success rate of 83 percent. Its developers say it could prove useful for law enforcement, search and rescue, and — perhaps most important — health care.

As Windows 10 approaches its third birthday, it's maturing steadily. A worldwide installed base of more than 700 million active users is impressive, but what will it take to convince Windows 7 users to switch? Here's my report card.

Whether you want to use the $35 Raspberry Pi computer as a media center, retro games console or desktop PC -- the credit card-sized device has got you covered.

But that's only the start of what the smash-hit machine is capable of.

As a board meant for tinkerers, who aren't scared of dropping down to the command line or breaking out the soldering iron, it's no surprise the Pi can run all manner of weird and wonderful systems.

This list rounds up the free systems that are available, from easy-to-use desktop systems aimed at novice users to powerful systems designed for those familiar with the command line.

I’ve been noticing videos going viral the last few days, some with millions of views, about Muslim women bravely fighting to free themselves from oppression in the Middle East. The videos, curiously, are being shared enthusiastically by many Republicans and pro-Israel hawks, who aren’t traditionally the sort of crowd you see rallying to support the civil rights of Muslims. What’s up with that?

Well, you may want to sit down for this shocker, but it turns out that they happen to be women from a nation that the US war machine is currently escalating operations against. They are Iranian.

Here's the A, as explained by House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving and House chief administrative officer Phil Kiko in a six-page, Feb. 7, 2017, memo marked "URGENT" and addressed to the House Committee on Administration:

Irving and Kiko said their investigation found "'numerous and egregious violations of House IT security' by members of the Awan family, including using Congress members' usernames and 'the unauthorized storage of sensitive House information outside the House ... These employees accessed user accounts and computers for offices that did not employ them, without the knowledge and permission of the impacted member's office,' the Irving/Kiko memo said, adding, 'Four of the employees accessed the Democratic Caucus computers 5,735 times.'

"More than 100 office computers were open to access from people not on the office's staff, it said," according to Daily Caller News Foundation's Luke Rosiak, who first reported the document.

Samba TV has struck deals with roughly a dozen TV brands — including Sony, Sharp, TCL and Philips — to place its software on certain sets. When people set up their TVs, a screen urges them to enable a service called Samba Interactive TV, saying it recommends shows and provides special offers “by cleverly recognizing onscreen content.” But the screen, which contains the enable button, does not detail how much information Samba TV collects to make those recommendations. 67

Samba TV declined to provide recent statistics, but one of its executives said at the end of 2016 that more than 90 percent of people opted in.

The big draw for advertisers — which have included Citi and JetBlue in the past, and now Expedia — is that Samba TV can also identify other devices in the home that share the TV’s internet connection.

The Supreme Court’s decision to allow every state to tax the internet is complete insanity. Sources in Illinois are warning that the state is bankrupt and it now intends to wage an all-out assault upon the internet. They may, in the end, simply force many small companies to REFUSE to do business with anyone who lives in Illinois. From a business perspective, all you get are costs. They do not pay you to collect their taxes, and in the end, they subject you to huge fines, penalties, and prison for a job that amounts to indentured servitude. Where are the class action lawyers to make that argument? On top of that, if a policeman from New Jersey has NO JURISDICTION to arrest someone in another state, then how can the state impose forced employment on persons from other states? Constitutionally they cannot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They also violate the Commerce Clause.

For years, conspiracy theories about smart phones listening to users without their permission to show them advertisements have abounded. While some researchers have shown this could happen, a first of its kind study just found something far more insidious. Academics at Northeastern University have just proven that your phone is recording your screen—as in taking video—and uploading it to third parties.

For the last year, Elleen Pan, Jingjing Ren, Martina Lindorfer, Christo Wilson, and David Choffnes ran an experiment involving more than 17,000 of the most popular Android apps using ten different phones. Their findings were alarming, to say the least.

The EU Copyright Directive, which is aimed at protecting the intellectual property of people who author material that is uploaded to the internet, has come under criticism because it could effectively lead banning parody content on the world wide web, such as viral memes, for example.

Members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg have rejected the copyright directive, with 318 voting against, 278 in favor and 31 abstaining.

Article 13 of the directive, which was rejected by European MPs, states that online media would be liable if its users upload or publish unlicensed content, including photos, videos, source code or music. According to the bill, such actions would require either that a license fee be paid, that the content be pre-filtered or that it be automatically censored.

The voice-activated gadget in the corner of your bedroom suddenly laughs maniacally, and sends a recording of your pillow talk to a colleague. The clip of Peppa Pig your toddler is watching on YouTube unexpectedly descends into bloodletting and death. The social network you use to keep in touch with old school friends turns out to be influencing elections and fomenting coups.

YouTube to clamp down on disturbing kids' videos such as dark Peppa Pig
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A powerful form of malware which can be used to distribute threats including Trojans, ransomware and malicious cryptocurrency mining software has been updated with a new technique which has rarely been seen in the wild.

Distributed in spam email phishing campaigns, Smoke Loader has been sporadically active since 2011 but has continually evolved. The malware has been particularly busy throughout 2018, with campaigns including the distribution of Smoke Loader via fake patches for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities which emerged earlier this year.

Like many malware campaigns, the initial attack is conducted via a malicious Microsoft Word attachment which tricks users into allowing macros, enabling Smoke Loader to be installed on the compromised system and allowing the Trojan to deliver additional malicious software.

Across the US, cities are independently passing measures to implement a $15 minimum wage - or mandating higher wages with an eye toward one day achieving that goal. But low-wage workers who are celebrating their fatter paychecks should enjoy the feeling while it lasts...because the more expensive workers become, the faster employers will work to replace those human workers with robots who can do the same job for a fraction of the cost.

Did the U.S. “intelligence community” judge that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election?

Most commentators seem to think so. Every news report I have read of the planned meeting of Presidents Trump and Putin in July refers to “Russian interference” as a fact and asks whether the matter will be discussed. Reports that President Putin denied involvement in the election are scoffed at, usually with a claim that the U.S. “intelligence community” proved Russian interference. In fact, the U.S. “intelligence community” has not done so. The intelligence community as a whole has not been tasked to make a judgment and some key members of that community did not participate in the report that is routinely cited as “proof” of “Russian interference.”

The Department of Justice won't prosecute Imran Awan, a former IT administrator for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and dozens of other Democrats, for allegations of cybersecurity breaches, theft and potential espionage, as part of a plea agreement one one count of unrelated bank fraud.

After the entry of your client’s plea of guilty to the offense identified in paragraph 1 above, your client will not be charged with any non-violent criminal offense in violation of Federal or District of Columbia law which was committed within the District of Columbia by your client prior to the execution of this Agreement -Awan Plea Agreement

Awan withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars after lying on a mortgage application and pretending to have a medical emergency that allowed him to drain his wife's retirement account. He then wired large sums of money to Pakistan in January, 2017.

On Tuesday morning, criminal Pakistani IT worker, Imran Awan pleaded guilty to making a false statement on a loan/credit application.

The Feds subsequently shut down everything else related to the IT scandal.

The Pakistani spy ring that infiltrated the House Dems is one of the biggest scandals in US history, yet here we are watching another egregious breach of security go unpunished, because Democrats are involved.

President of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton has been fighting the Imran Awan case along side of investigative reporter for The Daily Caller, Luke Rosiak.

Tuesday morning, Fitton spoke out.

Fitton tweeted: Breaking: Arwan (sic) pleads guilty this morning to making false statement on loan/credit application. Feds shutting down everything else related to Awan Brothers House IT scandal.

It's been four years since researcher Ruben Santamarta rocked the security world with his chilling discovery of major vulnerabilities in satellite equipment that could be abused to hijack and disrupt communications links to airplanes, ships, military operations, and industrial facilities.

Santamarta has now proven out those findings and taken his research to the level of terrifying, by successfully hacking into in-flight airplane WiFi networks and satcom equipment from the ground. "As far as I know I will be the first researcher that will demonstrate that it's possible to hack into communications devices on an in-flight aircraft … from the ground," he says.

When you choose to block someone on social media, it's usually for a good reason. Maybe you just don't get along with them, they post upsetting content or maybe they have harassed you in the past. Whatever the reason, most Facebook users probably want the people they block to stay blocked.

That was not the case for 800,000 Facebook users.

The social media giant said in an announcement on Monday that the privacy settings for these users had been affected for eight days, from May 29 to June 5. The bug allowed people who had been previously blocked on Facebook and the Messenger app, to become unblocked, giving them to see and message the profiles of those that had blocked them.

While the bug has since been fixed, during that period, 83 percent of people affected by the glitch had one person become unblocked, while the rest had to deal with a few more unwelcome guests.

Facebook further explained the bug on Twitter: