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Censorship in China: Crackdown on bloggers as rumours of coup swirl

Six people are held and 16 websites shut down as political crisis grips Beijing after... more

BRAVATRAVELS
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1 month ago
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3 comments

We Just Built Skynet in the Desert, Now What?

Ten years after 9/11, the National Security Agency (NSA) is close to putting the finishing touches on what will be the single biggest spy center in the country. According to James Bamford of WIRED, this new one million-square foot spy complex in the Utah Desert will actually be capable of monitoring, intercepting and de-encrypting just about any message sent over any communication network in the country. It will be capable of keeping tabs on any civilian in the U.S. or any foreigner visiting the USA. And it will all be hooked up to federal computers in Washington, giving it access to the records and databases of the most powerful government agencies in the country. If all this is starting to sound a lot like Skynet in the Terminator movies, that’s because, well, it is - minus the Schwarzenegger robots, of course.

The sheer amount of data that the NSA – and by extension the CIA, FBI and Pentagon – will be able to collect on both foreigners and its own civilians is staggering. The $2 billion center, which goes by the disarmingly bland name of the Utah Data Center, is the final piece in the puzzle for the Pentagon, which has been attempting to build a Global Information Grid ever since 9/11. Remember the Total Information Awareness program of 2003? Well, it’s now here in physical form – and it’s heavily guarded. In military parlance, it’s not a “soft” target - the facility has been hardened to the point where a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling at 50 miles per hour couldn't muscle its way inside. At its peak, this new surveillance center will be able to handle so much data that the NSA practically had to coin a new word to describe it: yottabytes. There are so many servers running this system that the annual cooling costs are estimated to be $40 million.

That’s quite an electricity bill for a "data center."

That's because this federal spy center goes far beyond what’s already being collected about us online, to explore the “Deep Web” that’s all but invisible to typical search engines. The spy center will also delve into the world of code-breaking and reverse-encryption. Even things that we think are far beyond any type of cyber-penetration will be readily available to the powers-that-be. That’s where things get downright scary. We assume that spambots and spiders slither behind us everywhere we go online, but what do we really know about all the other information that is being tracked about us? What information is being collected about us by security monitors in the streets and satellites overhead? The scope of what's being collected by the NSA is breathlessly thorough in detail, reaching into every area of our lives:

"Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy."

This digital "pocket litter" that each of us leaves behind us may sound harmless – but that's until all of this highly unstructured data gets dumped into a supercomputing capable of mining all this data and producing patterns and insights. This “pocket litter” is no longer trash once it can be used to construct ever-more precise profiles of everyday civilians and predict future behaviors.

“Cybersecurity” and “the war on terror” are handy little buzzwords for enabling governments to extend their cyber-surveillance over every aspect of our lives. At the end of the day, pure democracy and absolute authoritarianism are really just flip sides of the same coin. This is precisely why dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We are so terrifying. Authoritarian regimes always start out with a willingness to help - not enslave - its civilians. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. A government that claims to protect its citizens by spying on them is a government that needs to be watched, monitored and held under strict surveillance by its own citizens.

http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/we-just-built-skynet-in-the-desert-now-whatTen years after 9/11, the National Security Agency (NSA) is close to putting the... more

JRBarilla
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2 months ago
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Kingdom of the Dwarves: Spiderhawk Chase

Ripkin contemplates his latest misstep.

TonyDiGerolamo
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1 month ago
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Why You Should Care: SOPA (Part 1)

Why You Should Care: SOPA (E1) http://youtu.be/Jt2Aag32jYg

Radical_Centrist
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1 month ago
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0 comments

The CIA Wants To Spy On You Through Your TV

Devices connected to internet leak information CIA director says these gadgets... more

rodstradamus
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2 months ago
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9 comments

Twitter could block super-injunction tweets

Twitter could bar British users from reading tweets that break future celebrity... more

aileenalmeda
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4 months ago
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0 comments

Stop Internet Piracy Act Dead on Arrival, Obama Succumbs to Pressure

Amid significant pressure from tens of thousands of internet users and major web... more

maasanova
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4 months ago
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30 comments

Facebook Timeline: 8 things to know

Social networking site Facebook’s latest service Timeline has been globally rolled out. The company said Timeline had so far been available only to a few people, but now it had made it available to everybody. Timeline was announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the f8 conference in September. Here’s all you need to know about Facebook Timeline.
What is Timeline
Timeline allows users to compile and let others see everything they have shared so far, from photos, stories to shared videos and music. Some of the things a user can do on Timeline are: edit his basic info, jump to the past, view his activity log, check highlights from each month, star stories he wants to highlight, add life events, update his status, view and add photos and share his a

pp activity.
How it is different from your current profile
Presently, only latest pictures or posts of users are visible, while large part of the previous posts are hidden. The only way to retrieve them is to scroll down and click on “More Stories”. Timeline on the other hand retains a user’s older posts, photos etc and also groups them datewise making it easy and convenient for viewing.
Activating Timeline
To get Timeline, a user needs to simply go to the Introducing Timeline page and click on ‘Get It Now’. Or he can wait till he receives an announcement at the top of his profile.
How it works
Once a user upgrades to Timeline, he will get seven days to review everything that appears on his Timeline before anyone else can see it. You can also choose to publish your Timeline at any time during the review period. If a user decides to wait, his timeline will automatically go live after seven days.
His new Timeline will replace his profile, however, all his stories and photos will remain there. Users, who want to see how their Timeline would appear to other people, can click on the ‘gear menu’ at the top of their Timeline, and select “View As.” This shows them how their timeline will appear to a specific friend or public.

Friends List
For those who always keep their Friends List private, Timeline is a curse as it prominently displays just how ‘popular’ you are on Facebook and who all are connected with you. There is no apparent way to turn it off, unlike earlier settings. This may be a major put-off for those who do not want to share their Friends List with all and sundry for various reasons.

Read more... http://rencadesign.com/wp/2011/12/facebook-timeline-8Social networking site Facebook’s latest service Timeline has been globally... more

artq8
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6 months ago
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Montreal local advertising, google seo services, ppc, ranking, target marketing

Local advertising, google local seo services, target & online internet marketing... more

moneytaskds
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6 months ago
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Web firms protest over police plans to cut off websites

Internet firms and campaigners are protesting against government-backed proposals that... more

ErinWatson
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6 months ago
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Congress Wants to Censor the Internet. Tell Them No. | www.thepoliticus.com

The internet is the most important innovation for democracy of our time. With the... more

dcherry
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7 months ago
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2 comments

Adobe acquires Typekit

Adobe announces its Creative Cloud strategy and it included the acquisition of... more

kleishear
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8 months ago
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0 comments

Barefoot in Prospect Park: Daytime Soaps Dot Com - Baseline Intelligence

Veteran Television Executive Jim Romanovich comments on what Prospect Park’s... more

jamesluk
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8 months ago
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0 comments

Bad spelling opens up security loophole

A missing dot in an email address might mean messages end up in the hands of cyber... more

ErinWatson
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9 months ago
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0 comments

SF Weekly Web Awards

Ye Gods! My head is still pounding from Friday night. After working for years right... more

baghdadbythebay
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9 months ago
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0 comments

25 Most Unusual X-Ray Images on the Web

As a radiologist or radiologist technician, you have probably seen some pretty... more

Kristena
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9 months ago
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Film Research Tip: Google Site Search - Baseline Intelligence

Specialty Film Researcher Jeremy Juuso shares a great tip for finding the answer to... more

jamesluk
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9 months ago
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0 comments

Where should the press draw the line when it comes to gathering information?

News of the World has come under fire for allegedly hacking the phone of murdered... more

sgwhites
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11 months ago
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22 comments

Control Considered Harmful

When companies try to artificially control the way their digital products get used in... more

figgdimension
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11 months ago
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WHACKO-TV INTERNET POLICE

Finally the government has added another branch we can get behind. Homeland Security... more

dwightdouglas
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11 months ago
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