This is a sign of the times, and the future is now. 10 years ago it was science fiction.
Office puts chips under staff's skin
The chip allows employees to open doors and use the photocopier
without a traditional pass card
Want to gain entry to your office, get on a bus, or
perhaps buy a sandwich? We're all getting used to swiping a card to do all these
things. But at Epicenter, a new hi-tech office block in Sweden, they are trying
a different approach - a chip under the skin.
Felicio de Costa, whose company is one of the tenants, arrives at the front
door and holds his hand against it to gain entry. Inside he does the same thing
to get into the office space he rents, and he can also wave his hand to operate
the photocopier. That's all because he has a tiny RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip,
about the size of a grain of rice, implanted in his hand. Soon, others among the
700 people expected to occupy the complex will also be offered the chance to be
chipped. Along with access to doors and photocopiers, they're promised further
services in the longer run, including the ability to pay in the cafe with a
touch of a hand. On the day of the building's official opening, the developer's chief
executive was, himself, chipped live on stage. And I decided that if was to get
to grips with this technology, I had to bite the bullet - and get chipped
too. The whole process is being organised by a Swedish bio-hacking group which was
profiled by my
colleague Jane Wakefield recently. One of its members, a rather fearsome looking
tattooist, inserted my chip. First, he massaged the skin between my thumb and index finger and rubbed in
some disinfectant. The he told me to take a deep breath while he inserted the
chip. There was a moment of pain - not much worse than any injection - and then
he stuck a plaster over my hand. Before trying my chip out, I wanted to know more about the thinking behind
it. Hannes Sjoblad, whose electronic business card is on his own chip and can be
accessed with a swipe of a smartphone, has the title chief disruption officer at
the development. I asked him whether people really wanted to get this intimate
with technology. "We already interact with technology all the time," he told me. "Today it's a
bit messy - we need pin codes and passwords. Wouldn't it be easy to just touch
with your hand? That's really intuitive." When I tested my chip, I found that it was not all that intuitive - I had to
twist my hand into an unnatural position to make the photocopier work. And while
some of the people around the building were looking forward to being chipped,
others were distinctly dubious. "Absolutely not," said one young man when I
asked him if he'd sign up. An older woman was more positive about the potential
of the technology but saw little point in being chipped just to get through a
door. But Hannes Sjoblad says he and the Swedish Biohacking Group have another
objective - preparing us all for the day when others want to chip us. "We want
to be able to understand this technology before big corporates and big
government come to us and say everyone should get chipped - the tax authority
chip, the Google or Facebook chip." Then, he says, we'll all be able to question
the way the technology is implemented from a position of much greater
knowledge. I've returned to Britain with a slightly sore hand - and a chip still under
my skin which has my contact details on it. Not that useful, but no doubt more
sophisticated chips will soon replace wearable technology like fitness bands or
payment devices, and we will get used to being augmented. All sorts of things
are possible - whether it becomes culturally acceptable to insert technology
beneath our skin is another matter.
If you’re looking to find ways to make easy money, then you’re in the right place. Looking for new job or getting a raise at your existing one are not your only options when it comes to boosting your income. If you’re open to putting ads on your car or to being the next NASA test subject, then here are some out-of-the-box ideas for you.
Car advertisements: You’ve probably seen a car with ads on it. You might even have wondered about it. I’m sure you sat there looking at the ads with curiosity or perhaps perhaps you thought it looked odd. But did you know that putting an ad on your car is the easiest way to earn a passive income? All you have to do is drive your car around like you would normally do, including going to work, dropping the kids off or going to the grocery store.
Depending on your driving habits, an advertiser can choose your car for their ads. You can make anywhere from $50 for a rear window decal to $400 for wrapping your entire car. The average length of time to showcase the ads range from six to 24 months, according to FreeCarMedia.com. All you need is a fairly new car, insurance and a valid driver’s license.
Selfies: In this digital age, you can actually earn money by taking selfies. With the free Stylinity app, you can take selfies, tag the items in your picture by scanning barcodes, upload it and then share it on your social media networks for others to search and buy. Every time someone makes a purchase, you earn points that you could redeem for cash. If you’re already taking a lot of selfies, why not make a little extra cash on the side for your efforts. Just shop, scan, snap and share!
Bed rest for NASA: If you don’t have a lot of responsibilities and you’re in good health, NASA may pay you up to $18,000 total or $1,200 a week to lay in bed. The purpose of the study is to see what impact exercise has on the loss of muscle, bone and cardiovascular function. It’s NASA’s way of keeping their astronauts healthy while in outer space. Once you’re chosen as a test subject, you’ll either be placed in a non-exercising group or an exercising group. For those that are exercising, all exercises would be done laying down in bed. The total time commitment will be 97 (non-exercising) or 105 days (exercising). To sign up, go to bedreststudy.jsc.nasa.gov.
Sell your hair: Crazy as it sounds, you can sell your hair to buyers who will then take your hair to create wigs and other hairpieces. Similar to listing your car or any other goods that you’d like to sell, you upload a picture with specific details of your hair to an online marketplace. You can set the price or have buyers submit their best offers. You could make anywhere in the hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on the length and health of your locks. If you’re interested, search “make money by selling your hair” on Google and you will see a bunch of listing sites where you can sell your hair.
Be someone’s friend: I’m sure you have a lot of friends, but now you can actually earn a good living by being someone else’s friend. Whether it’s going out to dinner with someone who doesn’t want to dine alone or working out alongside someone who travels, there are many reasons why one would rent a friend. According to RentAFriend.com, most friends start at $10 an hour with some friends making up to $2,000 a week for being a full-time friend. Similar to renting a room in your home, make sure you find out a little more about the person before you agree to be their friend for the day or week. If you think this is a way for you to make some extra cash, go ahead and sign up to be a friend.
If you’re in need of some extra cash or would like to make money the unconventional way, look into some of my suggestions above. Sometimes thinking outside the box can give you more options and choices as to how you can earn an income. Some of these suggestions might sound crazy to you, and that probably means it’s not for you — but it might work great for someone else.
CSE tracks millions of downloads daily: Snowden documents
Global sites for sharing movies, photos, music targeted in mass anti-terror surveillance
Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects, CBC News has learned. Details of the Communications Security Establishment project dubbed "Levitation" are revealed in a document obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and recently released to CBC News.
Under Levitation, analysts with the electronic eavesdropping service can access information on about 10 to 15 million uploads and downloads of files from free websites each day, the document says. "Every single thing that you do — in this case uploading/downloading files to these sites — that act is being archived, collected and analyzed," says Ron Deibert, director of the University of Toronto-based internet security think-tank Citizen Lab, who reviewed the document. In the document, a PowerPoint presentation written in 2012, the CSE analyst who wrote it jokes about being overloaded with innocuous files such as episodes of the musical TV series Glee in their hunt for terrorists. CBC analyzed the document in collaboration with the U.S. news website The Intercept, which obtained it from Snowden.
The presentation provides a rare glimpse into Canada's cyber-sleuthing capabilities and its use of its spy partners' immense databases to track the online traffic of millions of people around the world, including Canadians. That glimpse may be of even greater interest now that the Harper government plans to introduce new legislation increasing the powers of Canada's security agencies. Though Canada’s always been described as a junior partner in the Five Eyes spying partnership, which includes the U.S., Britain, New Zealand and Australia, this document shows it led the way in developing this new extremist-tracking tool. "It's really the first time that a story has been reported that involves [CSE] as the lead agency in a program of pure mass surveillance," said Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and journalist with The Intercept, and who has been instrumental in bringing Snowden's information to public attention. Canada's electronic surveillance service said it cannot comment on the specific program, but added that some of its metadata analysis is designed to identify foreign terrorists who use the internet for activities threatening the security of Canada and Canadians.
To print the document, click the "Original Document" link to open the original PDF. At this time it is not possible to print the document with annotations.
On mobile? Click here for Levitation file "CSE is clearly mandated to collect foreign signals intelligence to protect Canada and Canadians from a variety of threats to our national security, including terrorism," agency spokesman Andrew McLaughlin wrote in an email to CBC. Deibert, at the Citizen Lab, says that on the surface the Levitation program is reassuring, indicating Canada's spies are doing their job, but he adds that the mass surveillance nature of it raises questions.
'A giant X-ray machine'
According to the document, Canada can access data from 102 free file upload sites, though only three file-host companies are named: Sendspace, Rapidshare and the now-defunct Megaupload. Sendspace told CBC News that "no organization has the ability/permission to trawl/search Sendspace for data," and its policy states it won't disclose user identities unless legally required.
Tamir Israel, an internet policy lawyer, says the program raises questions because it's "completely at the discretion of CSE essentially what documents to pick." (Amber Hildebrandt/CBC News)
No other file-sharing company responded to CBC requests for comment. However, the Levitation document says that access to the data comes from unnamed "special sources," a term that in previous Snowden documents seemed to refer to telecommunications companies or cable operators. It is also unclear which, or how many, of the Five Eyes access information on these uploaded files and whether the companies involved know the spy agencies have this access. Many people use file-sharing websites to share photos, videos, music and documents, but these cyber-lockers have also been accused of being havens for illegally sharing copyrighted content. Not surprisingly, extremists also use the online storage hubs to share propaganda and training materials. To find those files, the document says Canada's spy agency must first weed out the so-called Glee episodes as well as pictures of cars on fire and vast amounts of other content unrelated to terrorism. Analysts find 350 "interesting download events" each month, less than 0.0001 per cent of the total collected traffic, according to the top-secret presentation. Surveillance specialists can then retrieve the metadata on a suspicious file, and use it to map out a day's worth of that file user's online activity. By inputting other bits of information into at least two databases created by the spying partners, analysts can discover the identity and online behaviour of those uploading or downloading these files, as well as, potentially, new suspicious documents. The Levitation project illustrates the "giant X-ray machine over all our digital lives," says Deibert.
From IP to ID
Once a suspicious file-downloader is identified, analysts can plug that IP address into Mutant Broth, a database run by the British electronic spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), to see five hours of that computer's online traffic before and after the download occurred.
That can sometimes lead them to a Facebook profile page and to a string of Google and other cookies used to track online users' activities for advertising purposes. This can help identify an individual.
In one example in the top-secret document, analysts also used the U.S. National Security Agency's powerful Marina database, which keeps online metadata on people for up to a year, to search for further information about a target's Facebook profile. It helped them find an email address.
After doing its research, the Levitation team then passes on a list of suspects to CSE's Office of Counter Terrorism.
The agency cites two successes as of 2012: the discovery of a German hostage video through a previously unknown target, and an uploaded document that gave it the hostage strategy of a terrorist organization.
It's unclear from the leaked document how long Levitation was operational and whether it is still in use.
CSE says its foreign signals intelligence has "played a vital role in uncovering foreign-based extremists' efforts to attract, radicalize and train individuals to carry out attacks in Canada and abroad." But it offered no specifics about Levitation.
'What else can they do?'
Back in 2012, the spy agency appeared to be assessing the power and accuracy of the Levitation project as compared to other tools in its counterterrorism arsenal.
'The specific uses that they talk about in this context may not be the problem, but it's what else they can do.'- Tech lawyer Tamir Israel
Though the presentation jokes about filtering out Glee episodes, the issue underscores an increasing problem for spy agencies around the world: how the massive haystack of internet traffic they are collecting is straining spy agency resources.
Projects like Levitation aim to automate part of the process.
But it also causes some people to worry about what these powerful and secretive agencies can do with such an immense store of data at their fingertips.
"The specific uses that they talk about in this context may not be the problem, but it's what else they can do," says Tamir Israel, a lawyer with the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
National security expert Wesley Wark says the Levitation documents clearly demonstrate the CSE's abilities. But he also warns the tool has the potential to be "hugely intrusive."
A recent story by The Guardian illustrates that potential. The British newspaper revealed that that the GCHQ scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the largest American and British media outlets, as part of a test exercise.
The story, based on Snowden documents, says GCHQ has also listed investigative journalists as a "threat" who rank somewhere between terrorists and hackers.
A similar issue could arise here, with the eavesdropping service choosing targets outside the terrorism realm, says Israel.
Academics, lawyers, journalists, activists and business people commonly use file-hosting sites as part of their jobs.
"It's completely at the discretion of CSE essentially what documents to pick," Israel says.
The mass surveillance by Canada's signals intelligence agency also raises questions about the number of Canadians inadvertently caught up in it.
In the Levitation presentation, two anonymous Canadian IP addresses from a Montreal-based data server appear on a list of suspicious downloads around the world. The list also included several from allies and trading partners, including the U.K., U.S., Spain, Brazil, Germany and Portugal.
By law, CSE isn't allowed to target Canadians. Canada's commissioner charged with reviewing the secretive group found it unintentionally swept up private communications of 66 Canadians while monitoring signals intelligence abroad, but concluded there was no sign of unlawful practice.
Canada is supposed to mask the identities of untargeted Canadians scooped up in its surveillance before passing information to its Five Eyes partners and law enforcement agencies.
Deibert says there are "all sorts of grey areas" in how CSE operates, including how long they can retain the data they collect, the volume of the mass collection, the rules around metadata and how this data is shared with spying partners.
"The mission is appropriate," he says. "But is engaging in wholesale mass surveillance the appropriate means to that end? Especially in the context where, in this country, you have very little oversight in any meaningful sense."
Do you really believe this? I think the light got turned on by accident and they are just trying to cover their tracks.
DEA chief: US abandoned plan to track cars near gun shows
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration abandoned an internal proposal to use surveillance cameras for photographing vehicle license plates near gun shows in the United States to investigate gun-trafficking, the agency's chief said Wednesday.
DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart said in a statement that the proposal memorialized in an employee's email was only a suggestion, never authorized by her agency and never put into action. The AP also learned that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not authorize or approve the license plate surveillance plan.
Automated license plate scanners take pictures of every vehicle that passes their field of view and record the information in a database that can
http://www.cbc.ca/news/1.2930120
Response from the Communications Security Establishment to CBC
To print the document, click the "Original Document" link to open the original PDF. At this time it is not possible to print the document with annotations.
be used to track a vehicle's movements over time.
Federal, state and local police agencies routinely use the cameras mounted on patrol cruisers or in fixed locations, such as utility poles or busy intersections. Collectively, they capture the movements of millions of vehicles each day. Private companies, including tow truck agencies, also use them. The scanners have raised significant privacy concerns even though they generally only record cars and trucks driving on public roads. There are no consistent, national rules that govern how police can use the information, how long it can be saved and how widely the records can be shared with other police agencies. The Wall Street Journal reported the DEA's aborted plan in Wednesday's editions.
Nigeria elections put Christians in danger of more Muslim attacks Muslim persecution of Christians is at a high tide — and there are grave fears of more sectarian bloodletting as millions of people in Nigeria, which is half Muslim and half Christian, vote for their national leaders next month. These religious atrocities cry out for media attention and political awareness,… People stand near blood stains in the street following last night’s explosion in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, May 19, 2014. A car bomb exploded in the Christian neighborhood of Nigeria’s second most populous and mainly Muslim city of Kano on Sunday ... more > Muslim persecution of Christians is at a high tide — and there are grave fears of more sectarian bloodletting as millions of people in Nigeria, which is half Muslim and half Christian, vote for their national leaders next month. These religious atrocities cry out for media attention and political awareness, said Raymond Ibrahim, author of the monthly report “Muslim Persecution of Christians,” which has chronicled attacks on Christians in dozens of countries since July 2011. Mainstream media rarely cover attacks on Christians, even though they happen “all around the Islamic world,” Mr. Ibrahim said Tuesday. SEE ALSO: Boko Haram leader: ‘God commanded’ killings are ‘the tip of the iceberg’ Muslim-on-Muslim attacks can get broad attention — such as the April kidnappings of some 230 Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. The mass abductions so alarmed the world that first lady Michelle Obama brought attention to the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls. But from August to October, Boko Haram and its radical Islamist allies destroyed nearly 200 Christian churches as they rampaged through towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria, said Mr. Ibrahim, a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His monthly report is published by Gatestone Institute, an international think tank led by John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In just four years, he said, Boko Haram has destroyed around 1,000 churches. The “sheer volume” of the attacks on Christians in Nigeria “makes it one of the worst” places for them, Mr. Ibrahim said. The peril in Nigeria was driven home Tuesday during a House hearing. Nigerians are scheduled to vote Feb. 14 from a slate of several presidential candidates, including Christian incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and Muslim challenger Mohammadu Buhari, to lead the nation’s 173 million people. An election for local leadership will be held Feb. 28. In 2011, Mr. Jonathan’s victory over Mr. Buhari triggered terrible sectarian violence in the Muslim north. More than 700 churches were burned, hundreds of Christians were targeted and killed, and thousands of Christian businesses and homes were torched. That violence occurred at a time when Boko Haram was waging its “campaign of terror,” human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said in his testimony Tuesday to the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, global health, global human rights and international organizations. “Boko Haram has never seen a live Christian male it liked,” Mr. Ogebe said. Depending on the election outcome, Feb. 14 could turn into “a Valentine’s Day massacre for the poor Christians in northern Nigeria.” “The fear of political explosion is real,” lawyer Jadegoke Badejo said at the hearing. Just this year, as many as 2,000 people have been killed by Boko Haram in its attack on the town of Baga and nearby villages, said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican and subcommittee chairman. “Clearly, Boko Haram violence is escalating drastically,” he said.
Edward Snowden: Apple iPhone with Secret iFeature Allows Government to Spy on You Edward Snowden, the infamous former contractor for the National Security Agency who leaked thousands of pages of previously classified NSA intelligence documents, reportedly thinks that Apple's iPhone has "special software" that authorities can activate remotely to be able to gather information about the user. "Edward never uses an iPhone; he's got a simple phone," said the lawyer of Snowden, Anatoly Kucherena, in an interview with the Russian media company RIA Novosti. "The iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him; that's why on security grounds he refused to have this phone," Kucherena added. It is not clear if the "special software" being referred to in the interview is made up of standard diagnostic tools, or if the NSA whistleblower thinks intelligence agencies from the United States have found a way to compromise the mobile operating system developed by Apple. Apple was among the first companies accused of participating in the PRISM data mining project of the NSA, following the release by Snowden of the agency's classified documents. The project reportedly involved extracting video, audio, pictures, documents, emails and connection logs from devices, allowing analysts to track the movement of the device's user and the communications that they are receiving or sending out. At the time, the accusations were immediately denied by Apple, stating that the company is not involved in the supposed PRISM project and that it does not grant government agencies direct access to the company's servers.
Succeeding leaks showed that the NSA developed spyware that would target iPhones, allowing intelligence agencies to access messages, live microphone feeds, data contained in the devices and location data. While it was not made clear whether the program was a success, Apple again denied being involved in the development of such a spyware. Apple said that the company has never been involved with the NSA in the creation of backdoor software for any of the company's products. In addition, Apple said that it is not aware of any alleged programs by the NSA to target the company's products such as the iPhone, as the company values the security and privacy of its users. For the latest iOS 8 used by Apple on its mobile devices, the company said that it was not possible for Apple itself to decrypt the messages that were sent through their devices, adding to the company's supposed emphasis on the security of its users.
27 Facts About The Middle Class In America After 6 Years With Obama In Office
Michael Snyder: During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, Barack Obama promised to make life better for middle class families. Of course he has also promised to do this during all of his other State of the Union addresses, but apparently he still believes that there are people out there that are buying what he is selling. Each January, he gets up there and tells us how the economy is “turning around” and to believe that much brighter days are right around the corner. And yet things just continue to get even worse for the middle class. The numbers that you are about to see will not be included in Obama’s State of the Union speech. They don’t fit the “narrative” that Obama is trying to sell to the American people. But all of these statistics are accurate. They paint a picture of a middle class that is dying. Yes, the decline of the U.S. middle class is a phenomenon that has been playing out for decades. But without a doubt, our troubles have accelerated during the Obama years. When it comes to economics, he is completely and utterly clueless, and the policies that he has implemented are eating away at the foundations of our economy like a cancer. The following are 27 facts that show how the middle class has fared under 6 years of Barack Obama…
#1 American families in the middle 20 percent of the income scale now earn less money than they did on the day when Barack Obama first entered the White House.
#2 American families in the middle 20 percent of the income scale have a lower net worth than they did on the day when Barack Obama first entered the White House.
#3 According to a Washington Post article published just a few days ago, more than 50 percent of the children in U.S. public schools now come from low income homes. This is the first time that this has happened in at least 50 years.
#4 According to a Census Bureau report that was recently released, 65 percent of all children in the United States are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.
#5 In 2008, the total number of business closures exceeded the total number of businesses being created for the first time ever, and that has continued to happen every single year since then.
#6 In 2008, 53 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be “middle class”. But by 2014, only 44 percent of all Americans still considered themselves to be “middle class”.
#7 In 2008, 25 percent of all Americans in the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket considered themselves to be “lower class”. But in 2014, an astounding 49 percent of all Americans in that age range considered themselves to be “lower class”.
#8 Traditionally, owning a home has been one of the key indicators that you belong to the middle class. So what does the fact that the rate of homeownership in America has been falling for seven years in a row say about the Obama years?
#9 According to a survey that was conducted last year, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.
#10 After accounting for inflation, median household income in the United States is 8 percent lower than it was when the last recession started in 2007.
#11 According to one recent survey, 62 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
#12 At this point, one out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“.
#13 When Barack Obama first set foot in the Oval Office, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, that number is sitting at only 59.2 percent…
#14 While Barack Obama has been in the White House, the average duration of unemployment in the United States has risen from 19.8 weeks to 32.8 weeks.
#15 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
#17 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is over 101 percent.
#18 The U.S. national debt is on pace to approximately double during the eight years of the Obama administration. In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government will accumulate about as much debt as it did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined.
#19 According to the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.
#20 The poverty rate in the United States has been at 15 percent or above for 3 consecutive years. This is the first time that has happened since 1965.
#21 From 2009 through 2013, the U.S. government spent a whopping 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs. #22 While Barack Obama has been in the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has gone from 32 million to 46 million.
#23 Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had full-time jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceedsthe number of women that have full-time jobs.
#24 One recent survey discovered that about 22 percent of all Americans have had to turn to a church food panty for assistance.
#25 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty”.
#2640.9 percent of all children in the United States that are living with only one parent are living in poverty.
#27 According to a report that was released late last year by the National Center on Family Homelessness, the number of homeless children in the United States has reached a new all-time record high of 2.5 million.
I guess the rich think we are that stupid, it has been heading that way for years, the gov, the rich, the powerful, the smarter ones all think they know what is better for us. It is all about control. They want the ability to punish you if you speak up or act up in a way they don't want you too. If they control your money, they control your food, they control your circus (entertainment) they will control you.
Bill Gates Pushes Cashless Society
Scheme would allow government to confiscate money at will
Bill Gates is now promoting “digital currency” in third-world countries, which will make the poor even more dependent on central banks while also turning them into guinea pigs for the development of a “cashless society” in the U.S. and Europe.
Gates outlined his plan for a cashless society in a letter published Thursday in which he proposed the poor have better access to mobile phones so they can store their financial assets digitally instead of keeping hard currency at home. “The key to this will be mobile phones,” he wrote. “Already, in the developing countries with the right regulatory framework, people are storing money digitally on their phones and using their phones to make purchases, as if they were debit cards.” “By 2030, two billion people who don’t have a bank account today will be storing money and making payment with their phones.”
But this will only enslave the poor into an electronic monetary system they don’t control, allowing central banks and the government unparalleled ability to confiscate money at will through taxes and “bail-ins.” For example, after Cyprus’s largest bank was sunk from exposure to debt-crippled Greece, the Cypriot government looted people’s bank accounts in 2013 as part of a “bail-in” program with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. “If you can do this once, you can do it again,” financial analyst Lars Seier Christensen wrote, who called the “bail-in” full-blown socialism. “If you can confiscate 10% of a bank customer’s money, you can confiscate 25, 50 or even 100%.” A third-world government wouldn’t even need to wait for an economic crisis to loot digital bank accounts, however, with the cashless scheme Gates proposes, officials could simply impose a tax and confiscate money automatically. And there’s no reason to believe this scheme will only be limited to the third-world; the United Kingdom has already tested digital-only payments earlier this year. “While the whole idea is being marketed as an inevitable consequence of the decline in cash payments and the rise of credit cards and contact-less payment technology, many in the privacy community see the elimination of cash as another means of abolishing anonymity,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote. “Alternatives to cash that could still provide anonymity, such as crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, are slowly being adopted by more stores and chains, but at nowhere near the rate required to provide a viable competitor to the likes of Google Wallet and Paypal.”
When you are out in the woods on an adventure with a group of friends, communication is extremely important. After all, there will be times when one or a couple of people would go right ahead and scout around, while others stay back to set up base camp. Either way, keeping in touch with one another gives that sense of safety and security, and just in case you would like to be extra prepared, perhaps one ought to check out the Beartooth. No, this is not some sort of ancient relic from one’s ancestors who actually killed a bear to extract a literal tooth. The Beartooth is a new device which is capable of transforming the smartphone into an emergency two-way radio so that you need not tote any more additional devices when you are backpacking. The case itself will function as an antenna in order for it to communicate with another Beartooth device. In other words, your smartphone will end up as a highly specialized radio which will be independent of cell phone towers or Wi-Fi signals, making it perfect for those grand outdoor adventures with its push to talk feature. It can call a specific Beartooth user or to put a call out to any devices in range, where among them include traditional 2-way radio devices. Compatible with the iPhone 5 or newer, the Samsung Galaxy S4 or newer, the Beartooth will also boast of an integrated geolocation tool that depicts your current location, and you can also send that location to your mates.
They have to know what is your business all the time, for your own good because you are too dumb to know what is good for you. New police radars can 'see' inside homes At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies quietly deployed radars that let them effectively see inside homes, with little notice to the courts or the public. WASHINGTON — At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance. Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person's house without first obtaining a search warrant. The radars work like finely tuned motion detectors, using radio waves to zero in on movements as slight as human breathing from a distance of more than 50 feet. They can detect whether anyone is inside of a house, where they are and whether they are moving. Current and former federal officials say the information is critical for keeping officers safe if they need to storm buildings or rescue hostages. But privacy advocates and judges have nonetheless expressed concern about the circumstances in which law enforcement agencies may be using the radars — and the fact that they have so far done so without public scrutiny. "The idea that the government can send signals through the wall of your house to figure out what's inside is problematic," said Christopher Soghoian, the American Civil Liberties Union's principal technologist. "Technologies that allow the police to look inside of a home are among the intrusive tools that police have." Agents' use of the radars was largely unknown until December, when a federal appeals court in Denver said officers had used one before they entered a house to arrest a man wanted for violating his parole. The judges expressed alarm that agents had used the new technology without a search warrant, warning that "the government's warrantless use of such a powerful tool to search inside homes poses grave Fourth Amendment questions." By then, however, the technology was hardly new. Federal contract records show the Marshals Service began buying the radars in 2012, and has so far spent at least $180,000 on them. Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said officials are reviewing the court's decision. He said the Marshals Service "routinely pursues and arrests violent offenders based on pre-established probable cause in arrest warrants" for serious crimes. The device the Marshals Service and others are using, known as the Range-R, looks like a sophisticated stud-finder. Its display shows whether it has detected movement on the other side of a wall and, if so, how far away it is — but it does not show a picture of what's happening inside. The Range-R's maker, L-3 Communications, estimates it has sold about 200 devices to 50 law enforcement agencies at a cost of about $6,000 each.
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Other radar devices have far more advanced capabilities, including three-dimensional displays of where people are located inside a building, according to marketing materials from their manufacturers. One is capable of being mounted on a drone. And the Justice Department has funded research to develop systems that can map the interiors of buildings and locate the people within them. The radars were first designed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. They represent the latest example of battlefield technology finding its way home to civilian policing and bringing complex legal questions with it. Those concerns are especially thorny when it comes to technology that lets the police determine what's happening inside someone's home. The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the Constitution generally bars police from scanning the outside of a house with a thermal camera unless they have a warrant, and specifically noted that the rule would apply to radar-based systems that were then being developed. In 2013, the court limited police's ability to have a drug dog sniff the outside of homes. The core of the Fourth Amendment, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, is "the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." Still, the radars appear to have drawn little scrutiny from state or federal courts. The federal appeals court's decision published last month was apparently the first by an appellate court to reference the technology or its implications. That case began when a fugitive-hunting task force headed by the U.S. Marshals Service tracked a man named Steven Denson, wanted for violating his parole, to a house in Wichita. Before they forced the door open, Deputy U.S. Marshal Josh Moff testified, he used a Range-R to detect that someone was inside. Moff's report made no mention of the radar; it said only that officers "developed reasonable suspicion that Denson was in the residence." Agents arrested Denson for the parole violation and charged him with illegally possessing two firearms they found inside. The agents had a warrant for Denson's arrest but did not have a search warrant. Denson's lawyer sought to have the guns charge thrown out, in part because the search began with the warrantless use of the radar device. Three judges on the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the search, and Denson's conviction, on other grounds. Still, the judges wrote, they had "little doubt that the radar device deployed here will soon generate many questions for this court." But privacy advocates said they see more immediate questions, including how judges could be surprised by technology that has been in agents' hands for at least two years. "The problem isn't that the police have this. The issue isn't the technology; the issue is always about how you use it and what the safeguards are," said Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Marshals Service has faced criticism for concealing other surveillance tools. Last year, the ACLU obtained an e-mail from a Sarasota, Fla., police sergeant asking officers from another department not to reveal that they had received information from a cellphone-monitoring tool known as a stingray. "In the past, and at the request of the U.S. Marshals, the investigative means utilized to locate the suspect have not been revealed," he wrote, suggesting that officers instead say they had received help from "a confidential source." William Sorukas, a former supervisor of the Marshals Service's domestic investigations arm, said deputies are not instructed to conceal the agency's high-tech tools, but they also know not to advertise them. "If you disclose a technology or a method or a source, you're telling the bad guys along with everyone else," he said.
Asteroid from start of solar system to pass near Earth Planet Earth has a close call coming up next week. An asteroid one-third of a mile across will pass about 745,000 miles from Earth on the night of Jan. 26, and WTOP’s Space Contributor, Greg Redfern, says you can spot it if you know where to look. “This is a definite miss,” Redfern says, but a relatively close one as these things go. “It is the largest space rock that we know of that’s going to fly by Earth until the year 2027.” The asteroid is code-named 2004 BL86, and Redfern says, “We know that it was part of the beginning of the solar system.” Dr. Don Yeomans, retiring head of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program at the jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, says “while it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more.” You won’t be able to see 2004 BL86 with your naked eye, but if you’re an amateur astronomer who knows what to look for, Redfern says, you can spot it. The website EarthSky has advice on how to spot it. By the way, that 2027 rock? The Guardian says the latest estimates project it’ll come within 19,000 miles. Hold on tight.
When you are out in the woods on an adventure with a group of friends, communication is extremely important. After all, there will be times when one or a couple of people would go right ahead and scout around, while others stay back to set up base camp. Either way, keeping in touch with one another gives that sense of safety and security, and just in case you would like to be extra prepared, perhaps one ought to check out the 