Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 84 of 153).

Discovering Names Of Secret NSA Surveillance Programs Via LinkedIn | Techdirt

While the NSA can use the Internet for spying on law-abiding citizens, the same citizens can use it for spying on the NSA. One Internet sleuth searched LinkedIn for a few of these codeword programs and turned up several resumes full of programs:

So, over the weekend, the Washington Post revealed some of the code names for various NSA surveillance programs, including NUCLEON, MARINA and MAINWAY. Chris Soghoian has pointed out that a quick LinkedIn search for profiles of people in Maryland with codenames like MARINA and NUCLEON happen to turn up profiles like this one which appear to reveal more codenames:

+Skilled in the use of several Intelligence tools and resources: ANCHORY, AMHS, NUCLEON, TRAFFICTHIEF, ARCMAP, SIGNAV, COASTLINE, DISHFIRE, FASTSCOPE, OCTAVE/CONTRAOCTAVE, PINWALE, UTT, WEBCANDID, MICHIGAN, PLUS, ASSOCIATION, MAINWAY, FASCIA, OCTSKYWARD, INTELINK, METRICS, BANYAN, MARINA

TRAFFICTHIEF, eh? WEBCANDID? Hmm… Apparently, NSA employees don’t realize that information they post online can be revealed.

via Discovering Names Of Secret NSA Surveillance Programs Via LinkedIn | Techdirt.

Cheney Says Leaks Were Traitorous – NYTimes.com

The New York Times decided to report on this appearance by Dick Cheney on Fox News Sunday:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended on Sunday the newly disclosed electronic surveillance programs operated by the government and called the former National Security Agency contract worker who disclosed them a criminal and a traitor.

“I think it’s one of the worst occasions in my memory of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States,” said Mr. Cheney, a forceful advocate for the classified programs when he was in office.

There’s no polite way to put this but you’ve got to be fucking shitting me.

Hey, Dick, does the name Valerie Plame mean anything to you? You remember her, the career CIA agent you outed when she and her husband proved your case for war with Iraq was built on a pack of lies? You destroyed her career not for any greater good, but simply as revenge for proving to the world that you’re a bully as well as a pathological liar?

Yeah, Dick Cheney was a “forceful advocate for classified programs” except for those times he betrayed them himself. Dick Cheney recklessly ended the career of a CIA agent. The only career that Edward Snowden ended is his own.

Dick Cheney makes my blood boil. He’s got zero credibility. Zero. He doesn’t belong on TV, he belongs in prison. And shame on Times reporter John Broder for writing this tripe.

via Cheney Defends Surveillance and Says Leaks Were Traitorous – NYTimes.com.

Avila and the broadband divide

It’s refreshing to see Rep. Marilyn Avila express some concern about the lack of broadband.

Avila was praised by N&O executive editor John Drescher in her defense of requiring local governments buy newspaper space for their legal notices:

“Are our citizens going to have to bookmark every website for every department in every division and check it every day to figure out what we’re up to down here?” she asked, adding that many residents don’t have Internet access.

Continue reading →

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

In addition to collecting call detail records, there is some speculation that phone conversations themselves are being harvested. Recall this exchange from last month, as reported by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian:

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

via Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers

Yesterday it was revealed that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of phone records from Verizon:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

Today, the Wall Street Journal claims this extends to AT&T and Sprint customers, too. Yesterday, The Guardian revealed PRISM, a Top Secret NSA program to directly query social media servers owned Facebook, Google, Apple, and others.

I suppose the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” got left behind somewhere in the 20th century.

via NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news | The Guardian.

Renewable energy is clean, cheap and here – what’s stopping us?

Great article on the solar revolution.

Solar will be the cheapest form of power in many countries within just a few years. In places such as California and Italy it has already reached so-called “grid parity.” Onshore wind, on a piece of land not constrained by years of planning delays, is already the cheapest form of energy on earth. These are not wild claims – those are figures from General Electric, Citibank and others.

Newly built solar plants are already considerably cheaper than new nuclear plants per kilowatt hour of electricity produced and we are almost at the stage where we don’t need a guaranteed price known as a feed-in tariff because solar energy will compete head on with conventional energy.

via Renewable energy is clean, cheap and here – what's stopping us? | Ashley Seager | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet For Over Two Years | MIT Technology Review

Astonishing.

One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum internet that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.

Today, Richard Hughes and pals at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico reveal an alternative quantum internet, which they say they’ve been running for two and half years. Their approach is to create a quantum network based around a hub and spoke-type network. All messages get routed from any point in the network to another via this central hub.

via Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet For Over Two Years | MIT Technology Review.

Kiera Wilmot’s chemistry explosion: Is she more like Oliver Sacks or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

Nice commentary on letting kids experiment with science, bangs, stinks, and all.

It is without a doubt risky to let kids try unsupervised science, but we already let kids do hazardous things such as ride bicycles and play baseball, and even encourage them to do so with a chaperone. You don’t get better at fielding unless you throw a ball around outside of regular team practices. We accept the idea that accidents might happen in the course of enthusiastic practice. So while throwing a baseball around in an open grassy area behind the cafeteria before school is a really bad idea, it is not a felony—even if you have the misfortune to accidentally hit someone in the head. We accept these risks in order to get better ball players.

via Kiera Wilmot’s chemistry explosion: Is she more like Oliver Sacks or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? – Slate Magazine.

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?

Astonishing. There’s a reason the federal government buys millions of dollars worth of file servers.

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

via Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

I hate Intuit already for their horrible customer service when I was a QuickBooks customer. Now it seems I have a new reason to hate them: they lobby against the IRS offering simple tax filing.

The idea, known as “return-free filing,” would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.

“This is not some pie-in-the-sky that’s never been done before,” said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “It’s doable, feasible, implementable, and at a relatively low cost.”

So why hasn’t it become a reality?

Well, for one thing, it doesn’t help that it’s been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software — Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.

via How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing – ProPublica.