Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Rebecca Greenfield

Bill Gates Admits That CTRL-Alt-Delete Was a Mistake

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 10:10:35 -0400

Bill Gates "finally" caved to pressure and admitted that CTRL-Alt-Delete was a "mistake," which seems a little harsh for a three-key combination used by frustrated PC users for decades. "We could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't wanna give us our single button," he said in an interview for a Harvard fundraising campaign. "It was a mistake," he said, an admission that has tech bloggers cheering.

To be clear, Gates is referring to CTRL-Alt-Delete for logging into Windows, not the command for restarting after the blue screen of death. Unlike a Mac, which after booting up requires a user to log-in, PC's require CTRL-Alt-Delete first, an admittedly clunky step. But, it was that kind of institutionalization that "made it famous," to borrow the words of its inventor, former IBM engineer David Bradley. Bradley came up with the combination to hasten the reboot process, in case of things like the blue screen of death. Gates, however, forced it into the front and center of our consciousness with the log-in requirement.

Read the full story at TheAtlanticWire.com.

(Image via 3777190317 / Shutterstock.com)

]]>

Apple CEO Not Interested in Cheap iPhones

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:37:51 -0400

If the $550 price tag of the iPhone 5C hadn't already made it clear that the C stands for "color" (as in the case) and not for "cheap,"Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated to Bloomberg Businessweek's Sam Grobart that the company isn't interested in making low-end phones for the masses. "We’re not in the junk business," said Cook. "I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. Fortunately, both of these markets are so big, and there’s so many people that care and want a great experience from their phone or their tablet, that Apple can have a really good business," he added.

Many had expected that with iPhone saturation in richer places like America and Europe, Apple would create a budget model for to sell in countries like China and India where for most people the price of an iPhone is out of reach. But, after last week's unveiling it became clearthe company hadn't done that, exactly. "We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone," Cook said. "Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost."

How Google Will Track You Without Cookies

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:43:12 -0400

As users have become both more aware and wary of cookies — the technology that tracks browsing activity for advertising purposes — Google has started experimenting with new tracking methods that don't use cookies. People want more control over the advertising they see and what companies know about them. Cookies can often feel creepy; it can feel like the Internet knows you too well.

Many people, therefore, avoid cookies, either by turning them off or using services that block them. Firefox and Safari block cookies to varying degrees. (Firefox's default setting turns cookies off; Safari blocks them altogether.) And, smartphone browsers and apps don't use cookies. Google, of course, loses revenue when that happens: Fewer people see their relevant ads. Therefore, it's no surprise that the company wants to figure out a different way to serve its ads sans cookies, as USA Today's Alistair Barr reports. But how might that work?

Google did not clarify the exact technology it was working on. "We and others have a number of concepts in this area, but they're all at very early stages," a spokesperson told Barr. One of those "concepts" includes fingerprinting a technique that "allows a web site to look at the characteristics of a computer such as what plugins and software you have installed, the size of the screen, the time zone, fonts and other features of any particular machine," as Forbes' Adam Tanner explains it. Your browser transmits all sorts of information that has nothing to do with cookies. All of those things put together form a unique identity that can be assigned an identifying number and then used just like a cookie. (You can check out how unique your browser is and the kind of information it is sharing over at this Electronic Frontier Foundation site.)

Read the full story at TheAtlanticWire.com.

(Image via SeanPavonePhoto / Shutterstock.com)

]]>

Facebook and Twitter Access in Iran Was Just a Glitch, for Now

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 13:02:53 -0400

After a brief period of censorship-free Internet in Iran, the Iranian government has clarified that yesterday's Facebook and Twitter access was not new freedoms of speech being provided by the new regime, but just a glitch. "The lack of a filter on Facebook last night was apparently due to technical problems and the technological committee is investigating this issue," Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, the head of Iran’s filtering and monitoring committee, said, according to a translation by Haaretz. "We are investigating to see which of these [internet providers] has done this." So, at least for now, free speech is a technicality in Iran.

Or at least that's the official word on the momentary lapse in oppression. Others say the lightened rules represent an overall shift in attitudes about digital censorship. "Insiders" tell The New York Times's Thomas Erdbrink that the glitch occurred as a result of infighting between more liberal groups trying to reopen social networking and the hard-liners who want to keep the block up. The new president, Hassan Rouhani, has called for more open Internet access multiple times. And since taking office, Rouhani's entire cabinet has opened Facebook pages, according to The Telegraph. Could Facebook and Twitter for all be next?

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

Learning to Live with Terrible New Twitter: A Two Step Program

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:00:00 -0400

Twitter has made a change to its website and mobile apps that has a lot of dedicated Twitter users very upset, but it's here, it's not going away, and it's time to get a grip. Users expect behavior like this from Facebook, but remember: Twitter, too, is a free service trying to make money for a rumored (but almost certain) IPO in 2014. If users want to continue tweeting, sooner or later, they're going to have to learn to live with the new feature. The Atlantic Wire is here to guide them through that process in two easy steps.

Step 1: How to Get Angry

So, first you have to know what to get angry about: Twitter changed the way users view other users' public conversations on the social network. Here's how it works: When people talk to each other on Twitter (by replying to a tweet), Twitter strings together the back-and-forth for those who want to view the entire discussion.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

(Image via Lorri Carter/Shutterstock.com)

]]>

Who Hacked China's Internet Yesterday?

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:39:49 -0400

On Sunday morning, China's Internet was hit with the largest Denial of Service attack it has ever seen, according to China Internet Network Information Center. The assault, which took down sites like Weibo (the Twitter of China), Amazon.cn, and the Bank of China, resulted in a 32 percent drop in Internet traffic — and nobody knows who did it.

The attacks came in two waves, starting at 2 a.m. and then again at 4 a.m. Denial of service, or DDoS, attacks use malware-infected computers to overwhelm a network by hitting servers with more activity than they can handle, overwhelming websites so that they are rendered inaccessible . Reports say the outages across China lasted somewhere between 2 and 13 hours. It's unclear if the attacks are ongoing, but much of the Internet under the .cn domain is working now, according to The China Real Time Report.

The CNNIC says it will release more information shortly, but so far hasn't confirmed the origin of the attacks. Despite what sounds like a complex take-down of part of China's domain, a single person with little hacking experience could have performed the hack, according to Matthew Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, which provides Web performance and security services for more than a million websites. "I don’t know how big the 'pipes' of .cn are, but it is not necessarily correct to infer that the attacker in this case had a significant amount of technical sophistication or resources," he told The Wall Street Journal's Paul Mozur Monday afternoon China time. "It may have well have been a single individual."

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

(Image via Filipe Matos Frazao/Shutterstock.com)

]]>

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Is Stepping Down

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 13:15:10 -0400

Microsoft CEO and former "monkey boy" Steve Ballmer will "retire" within the next 12 months, according to Microsoft, because, as Ballmer claims, this is just the right time. "We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing Senior Leadership Team," says Ballmer in the official company statement. "My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction." Though, from this internal email Ballmer sent to his employees he doesn't sound too thrilled to go: "This is an emotional and difficult thing for me to do. I take this step in the best interests of the company I love; it is the thing outside of my family and closest friends that matters to me most."

Ballmer will stay until he finds a new successor, for which people have already speculated could come from within Microsoft, including some unlikely people like founder Bill Gates. Just recently the Windows-maker reorganized the company, as it attempts to better transition to Windows 8 — a general failure so far.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

How Much Good Will Facebook's Internet-for-Everyone Plan Do?

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 11:18:07 -0400

Facebook along with six other telecom and tech companies has unveiled a grand plan to bring Internet connectivity to the 4 billion humans who don't yet have access, a move that "tries to pair humanitarian goals with the profit motive," as The New York Times's Vindu Goel explains it. You can read all about the plan here, and watch a video, complete with JFK speech voiceover, about it at Internet.org, the effort's online home. The idea sounds incredible. But that's about as far as this dream goes. Much like Elon Musk's Hyperloop, the devil is in the details. I's not exactly clear how Zuckerberg and co. have a plan to get the Internet to the untethered masses or if it's the best way to do so.

But set that aside for a second: what is the humanitarian goal these for-profit organizations are trying to attain? In a paper called "Is Connectivity a Human Right?" we get a "rough outline" of how the group plans on getting Internet everywhere:

Making internet access affordable by making it more efficient to deliver data.

Using less data by improving the efficiency of the apps and experiences we use.

Helping businesses drive internet access by developing a new model to get people online

The report then elaborates on the making the Internet more efficient part, which is the important part it ensures the following: "If the industry can collectively make progress here, then it is possible for operators to build even more proﬁtable models while offering data at significantly lower costs per megabyte." (Emphasis ours.) All of the technical improvements — like stronger signals, cheaper caching, and getting the government to allocate spectrum "more efficiently" — have to not just maintain, but increase profit margins for those involved. What doesn't get much discussion is what benefit the 4 billion people Facebook hopes to connect will get from all this. Even that is cast in business benefit. "Giving everyone the opportunity to connect is the foundation for enabling the knowledge economy."

Read the entire story at Quartz.

]]>

Congress Needs a Lesson in Passwords

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 10:22:48 -0400

Anonymous claims to have hacked the emails and passwords of some Congress persons and a bunch of their staffers, revealing that the members of our esteemed government have terrible password habits.

The list came via the Anonymous twitter handle OpsLastResort in protest of the NSA domestic spying revelations. The document claims to have the "current valid credentials" of more than 2,000 people. But, out of the kindness of their hearts, they "HAVE REMOVED SOME OF THE PASSWORDS AND SHUFFLED THE ORDER OF THE REMAINING ONES."

Even without knowing who chose what password, it's certain that Hill people need a lesson in Internet security, assuming the list is genuine. But, even if the list is fake, it's never too late to brush up on the rules.

Here's Everything Microsoft Is Letting the Government See

Rebecca Greenfield and Philip Bump, The Wire — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 09:44:23 -0400

For the first time, The Guardian is detailing how a tech company works with the National Security Agency to share user information under the NSA's PRISM program. Unfortunately, that tech company happens to be Microsoft, the one that makes the operating system used on 92 percent of computers in the world.

The tone of the report (and Microsoft's statement about it) contrasts significantly with what the company said when PRISM was revealed. The Guardian, using documents obtained from NSA leaker Edward Snowden, paints Microsoft as a compliant partner in creating windows and doors in their software for the government to access.

Before we get to the mechanics, we'll answer the obvious: Which Microsoft products are covered? Primarily the web-based ones. There are three specific Microsoft services that NSA has privileged access to: Outlook, SkyDrive, and Skype.

There Are at Least Three Easy Ways to Hack the Emergency Alert System

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 15:08:25 -0400

The small-scale hacking of the Emergency Alert System in Montana to broadcast a supposed zombie apocalypse earlier this year, revealed the possible safety hazards of a vulnerable alert system, making this new report on various ways to hack the system all the more alarming.According to an IOActive Security Advisory published, two of the systems responsible for delivering the messages, can be easily hacked. "An attacker who gains control of one or more DASDEC systems can disrupt these stations' ability to transmit and could disseminate false emergency information over a large geographic area," explains the report. DASDEC I and DADSEC II are both, apparently, at risk. But it doesn't just stop there: In addition, the report also links to another notice about further vulnerabilities in the system known as R189 One-Net/R189SE One-NetSE bringing the hole count up to three, which is disconcerting.

Technically, compromising the DASDEC systems doesn't sound too difficult. "These DASDEC application servers are currently shipped with their root-privileged SSH key as part of the firmware update package," Mike Davis, the principal research scientist who discovered the holes, told Wired's Kim Zetter. "This key allows an attacker to remotely log on in over the Internet and can manipulate any system function." In other words: If you have the secret password sent out with the firmware you can hack it— basically.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

What Your Email Metadata Told the NSA About You

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:34:55 -0400

President Obama said "nobody is listening to your telephone calls," even though the National Security Agency could actually track you from cellphone metadata . Well, the latest from the Edward Snowden leaks shows that Obama eventually told the NSA to stop collecting your email communications in 2011, apparently because the so-called StellarWind program " was not yielding much value ," even when collected in bulk. But how much could the NSA learn from all that email metadata, really? And was it more invasive than phone data collection? The agency is well beyond its one trillionth metadata record , after all, so they must have gotten pretty good at this.

To offer a basic sense of how StellarWind collection worked — and how much user names and IP addresses can tell a spy about a person, even if he's not reading the contents of your email — we took a look at the raw source code of an everyday email header. It's not the exact kind of information the NSA was pulling, of course, but it shows the type of information attached to every single one of your emails.

Below is what the metadata looks like as it travels around with an email — we've annotated the relevant parts, based on what The Guardian reported today as the legally allowed (and apparently expanded ) powers of the NSA to read without your permission. After all, it's right there behind your words:

Facebook's Former Security Chief Now Works for the NSA

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:00:00 -0400

About a year after Facebook reportedly joined PRISM, Max Kelly, the social network's chief security officer left for a job at the National Security Agency, either a curious career move or one that makes complete sense. The Chief Security Officer at a tech company is primarily concerned with keeping its information inside the company. Now working for an agency that tries to gather as much information as it can, Kelly's new job is sort of a complete reversal.

Facebook, among other tech companies, has distanced itself from the government, claiming it only cooperates when it is legally required to. But, "current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the NSA and to make their customers' information more accessible to the agency," report the New York Times's James Risen and Nick Wingfield.

Before Kelly — who once worked at the FBI — took the job at the NSA, he indicated a coziness with the government. Three weeks after leaving the network in 2010, he made a speech at the Defcon hacking conference that argued greater cooperation between places like Facebook and military defense. "Commercial entities and the military are dealing with the same problem," he said. "They should both understand their roles in the larger picture. There isn’t enough information shared." There he was more specifically addressing cyber-attacks from places like China, which as he predicted has turned into a national security issue. But, his speech also indicates that he thinks these two, at times opposed, industries should work together.

Which Tech Company Does the NSA Use Most?

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:56:12 -0400

Of the nine companies supposedly working with the government on PRISM, six and a half —Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft (which may or may not include Skype), Apple, and Google/YouTube(sort of) — have disclosed the number of government requests they get including the secret FISA court ones, giving us an idea of which tech company the government turns to most often. Only AOL and PalTalk have stayed mum. Of course, the numbers, only give us part of the story. The government deal required that the techies report a lump figure of all government requests — both FISA and otherwise. Because of that stipulation, Google has refused to participate — so we only know the non-FISA numbers from its annual transparency report. It's not ideal, but we are starting to get an idea of how much data the government asks of these organizations.

Most Total Requests

Below you can see a chart of the total requests over the six month period ending December 31, 2012 — besides for Google, which gives an annual report and does not include FISA orders.

By shear numbers alone, the government asks the most of Microsoft, which makes sense considering an earlier report delineating the cozy relationship between the two, in which Microsoft lets the feds exploit its bugs against foreign governments. With FISA requests the Google number would shoot up, though it's unclear how much.

]]>

Should We Blame Social Media for Graffiti in National Parks?

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:20:27 -0400

It's always disturbing to see vandalism in our national parks, but it's not so clear, as this New York Times story suggests, that social media is exacerbating the problem. The report quotes park personnel who blame the Internet for encouraging vandals. "With social media people take pictures of what they’ve done or what they’ve seen. It’s much more instantaneous," said Lorna Lange, the spokeswoman for Joshua Tree — where vandalism has "escalated this year into wholesale vandalism of archaeological sites and remote vistas," including that oatmeal cookie drawing pictured at right. That mimics an official statement by the park given to CNN in April. "While this started as a few markings, social media posts appear to have sparked numerous individuals' interest in adding to the vandalism of this scenic canyon." But, reading through the various media reports on this horrible assault on nature, it's unclear how much we can really blame Instagram and Facebook.

Minus the on-the-record remarks from park officials there's not much evidence to support the claims that the Internet did this. The Times article mentions a vandal putting her vacation pictures on Facebook — but in the context of the police using it to find the violators. That is the only reference to a specific someone posting their dirty doings online. The Los Angeles Times found a "graffiti expert," former San Bernardino police investigator Dwight Waldo, who pushed the Facebook theory. "It's all about the fame. They want worldwide attention," he said. "A lot of these things are posted on Facebook and stuff. These guys have their own pages." (An Internet search for said Facebook pages comes up empty.)

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

Linked In Jumps on the 2-Step Password Train Because It Looks Good

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 11:08:34 -0400

A little less than a year after six million passwords got hacked from the site, LinkedIn has added the more secure two-step verification, probably to look just as responsible as all the other tech sites adding a step these days. LinkedIn hasn't had a breach since the high-profile hack last June, but after Google, Facebook, and most recently Twitter fending off phishing — the second step involves texting a passcode to your cellphone, although Twitter makes you enter it with every login — the social network for business people needed to look more professional than ever and has added the functionality, the company announced in a blog post Friday.

Some might call it overkill to so thoroughly protect a site that doesn't really have that much personal information. (Though, LinkedIn members do provide credit card details to pay for premium subscriptions.) But it's good to get in the habit of doing a lot more leg-work to make sure, you know, someone doesn't sabotage your rsumé. The future is in doubly sure password protection. Plus, as far as hackers are concerned, one site is just the gateway to another — before you know it, they're inside your email and running rampant.

]]>

All Your Worst Fears About Google Glass Are Coming True

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 30 May 2013 11:48:35 -0400

It only took about six weeks for developers to take all of the theoretically creepy things the Internet dreamt up about the face computer of the future and turn those into real-life Google Glass nightmares. In addition to that creepy walking-and-stalking app Wink, Glassholes can look forward to a porn app.

For most people, however, Google's new facial recognition API presents a more terrifying scenario in terms of creepiness because of the privacy implications. The technology will enable apps to, know, remember a face, find your friends in a crowd, match your interests to other creeps at networking events, and build intelligent contact books, as Stephen Balaban a co-founder of API builder Lambda Labs explained. Some of that sounds useful, but what if you don't want your face to be recognized? Is there any escape? And surely this is only the beginning of potentially uncomfortable things that coding dorks will build into computer glasses of the future.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

Five Steps to Avoid Getting Hacked

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Tue, 28 May 2013 17:02:44 -0400

It took three hackers less than a day to decipher the majority of a list of 16,000 encrypted passwords, all because of the laughably easy-to-crack passwords most of us pick to protect our online lives. The most successful guy got 90 percent of the "plains," as hackers call deciphered passwords in 20 hours; the least successful guy just 62 percent of them in about an hour. Yes, it's really that easy. But, rather than sit there, shocked at how little security passwords provide, we should use this Ars Technica article as a lesson in password security. And, the first lesson learned therein is: Never, ever use a six character password.

Rule 1: Six characters is too always too short. The very easiest and the first thing all of Ars's hackers did was guess your super weak six character passwords, via what's called a "brute force" attack. See, the most successful of the hackers, Jeremi Gosney, a password expert with Stricture Consulting Group, hacked 62 percent of the list in sixteen minutes because that's how easy it is to guess a code that's just six letters long:

Gosney's first stage cracked 10,233 hashes, or 62 percent of the leaked list, in just 16 minutes. It started with a brute-force crack for all passwords containing one to six characters, meaning his computer tried every possible combination starting with "a" and ending with "//////." Because guesses have a maximum length of six and are comprised of 95 characters—that's 26 lower-case letters, 26 upper-case letters, 10 digits, and 33 symbols—there are a manageable number of total guesses. This is calculated by adding the sum of 956 + 955 + 954 + 953 + 952 + 95. It took him just two minutes and 32 seconds to complete the round, and it yielded the first 1,316 plains of the exercise.

"Normally I start by brute-forcing all characters from length one to length six because even on a single GPU, this attack completes nearly instantly with fast hashes," Gosney told Ars.

Rule 2: So is a seven- and eight-character password, probably. After doing almost nothing to guess six-character passwords, it gets a tiny bit harder for hackers, but not much. For example, Gosney then did more of these types of guessing attacks with different permutations of longer possibilities, trying seven or eight character passwords with only lower case letters, for example. That technique takes mere seconds, and in this case revealed many additional "plains."

Read the rest at The Atlantic Wire.

(Image via JMiks/Shutterstock.com)

]]>

What Google's X Lab Is Cooking Up Next

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:32:27 -0400

For the latest goings-ons inside Google's not-so-secret "secret" X lab, Bloomberg Businessweek's Brad Stone spent some time there, giving us a peak at the futuristic "moon shot" ideas the Google geeks are working on these days. While the X lab houses a lot of cooky ideas that never see the light of day, the "top-secret" innovation hub birthed the world's favorite face computer, Google Glass, and Google's controversial driverless cars. So as outlandish as some of the following ideas may sound, they're all in the works or they suddenly aren't, per Businessweek's new cover story — yes, even the balloons — and, hey, maybe they'll come true, too.

Senators Turn Tim Cook's Hearing into an Apple Genius Bar Visit

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:16:00 -0400

The U.S. Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had some tough questions for Tim Cook, CEO of computer giant Apple which stands accused of tax avoidance to the tune of billions of dollars. Questions like: "Why the hell do I have to keep updating my apps on my iPhone all the time and why you don't fix that?" That was a query from Sen. John McCain, and while Cook didn't have time to play AppleCare rep for the Arizona Republican, it wasn't the first or last time a Senator wanted to talk about his own Apple products.

Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, outed himself as an iPhone owner — "I have an iPhone in my pocket" — and later segued into tech support territory regarding his iPad. "I have an iPad right here. My granddaughter even knows how to use it — all of it," suggesting that he may be struggling mastering operating the tablet . (The Apple Store has a free workshop for that.)

Other Senators didn't exactly ask for gadget help, but made sure to let Cook know that they owned Apple things. When she met Cook during a hearing break Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hamsphire, greeted the iCommander in Chief saying: "So nice to meet you. I have an iPad." Either Ayotte thought that was the most socially appropriate way to greet Cook, or she was hoping to use it as a lead into all her questions about how to use the thing. Noted techno-phile Sen. Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, also made a point of mentioning how much she loves Apple by saying, "I love Apple. I love Apple!" She also noted she convinced her husband to switch over to a Mac. (Perhaps he has some Genius Bar questions?)

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

Will Next-Gen Social Media Wiretapping Catch the Next Boston Bombers?

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:54:05 -0400

The FBI's "top legislative priority" this year is a push to make tech companies comply with agency wiretapping standards in order to keep up with the changing way persons of interest — including, perhaps, the Boston bombing suspects and their family — communicate. The latest legislative proposals coming out of the FBI's Next Generation Cyber Initiative would threaten the likes of Facebook and Google with legal inquiries and fines if they don't allow access to real-time social media updates, reports the Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima.

Currently, social networks either don't have the technology to conduct extensive surveillance on their users, or they have been able to avoid cooperating with officials. So, no, Facebook is not spying on the wall posts of people on watch lists. But that's mostly because the government's ability to link up with major communications companies (under a 1994 law known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) has not kept up with its escalation in secret wiretapping legalese (famously build under the Bush administration). Now the FBI would like to change that, because of what they call periods of "going dark," during which the intelligence community doesn't have the means to gather "valuable evidence" from Internet communications.

Read more at Atlantic Wire.

]]>

The Internet Is Not Freaking Out About the SOPA Sequel

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:18:55 -0400

Over 200 sites are participating in today's Internet shutdown to protest the cyber-security bill Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which the House of Representatives passed last week. But, the big names that showed up to last year's nearly Internet-wide protest of SOPA—like Wikipedia and Wired—haven't shut down their sites this time, even though opponents argue this bill is worse than any previously proposed Internet regulation. "#CISPA is the ugly fusion of SOPA and PIPA into a super zombie bill determined to kill your online privacy," tweeted out YourAnonNews today, to underscore that very point. The voices speaking out today are very loud, but they don't have the ubiquity or scale of that last round of online protests.

Unlike SOPA which was widely condemned in the tech community, CISPA has the support of some major tech companies for the bill's measures meant to help them fight hackers. Last year Facebook came out in support of the legislation. And though it has since revoked its official support, the industry lobbying group TechNet, whose members include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft, sent a letter to Congress earlier this month in support of the legislation: "This bill recognizes the need for effective cybersecurity legislation that encourages voluntary, bi-directional, real time sharing of actionable cyber threat information to protect networks." A few days later, the House passed that bill. The full list of pro-CISPA companies found here also includes IBM and HP.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

Yahoo's New Weather App Will Change Every Day of Your Life

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:00:44 -0400

Yahoo already helps power the Apple weather app that comes built in to every iPhone, but the newly mobile first company has just launched its own proprietary meteorological wonder — indeed, this photo-first new app is so wondrous that you should go download Yahoo! Weather from the App Store right now. (It's available at Google Play, too.) It will literally change your life, given how addicted human beings of the smartphone era have become with checking the weather on their phones. Try it out. It's free. But once you download it, you'll never want to wait around for a local weather report — or scroll through a weather-service site — for your daily get-up-and-get-dressed forecast again.

Instead of one of those weather graphics with smiling sunshine or evil thunderbolts, the first thing you'll see upon opening the Yahoo! Weather app is a beautiful image, like the one to the right, of your current city — and its current conditions, but photographically. The photo, you see, changes based on both location and weather. It doesn't change in real time, but it's always a great shot. The images come from Yahoo's massive (and massively good) photo app, Flickr, which has initiated a Project Weather that seems built for an app like this. Yahoo! Weather takes those user submitted photos, which have to meet certain requirements, and then uses them to reflect the day's weather. (If you want to participate in the photo-sharing part of this all, head here.) Since Flickr tends to draw more professional photographers, the images that cycle the app — the background changes every so often — are super-high quality... unlike the new Facebook Home cover screen, which features a few too many baby pictures if you ask us. And because the weather background images come from an ever-growing and crowdsourced database, you can look forward to new and interesting shots on a regular basis.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>

How Reddit Fueled the Scanner-Happy Media to Out Innocent Boston 'Suspects'

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:41:21 -0400

If you thought the New York Post's "Bag Men" outing was bad, the most crowdsourced terror investigation in American history transformed from Internet sleuthing of FBI photos on Thursday night into a lynch mob — from Reddit to a police scanner to social media and beyond — that led to the outing of even more innocent people as would-be suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Indeed, the chaotic overnight scene in Watertown, Massachusetts — before one actual suspect was killed and before the ongoing manhunt for the other shut down Boston — was just the latest in a series of false reports naming suspects in a terror investigation, with their foundations in Internet sleuthing. The r/findbostonbombers subreddit was a flurry activity on Thursday night, tracking down a photo not released by the FBI that appeared to be a clearer picture of the man now known as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But there was an irresponsible chase in the works, too, trying to put a name to the face of the man in the white hat, until this morning only known by his FBI description, Suspect 2: "I think i found suspect 2..." asked one Reddit thread; "Is missing student Sunil Tripathi Marathon Bomber #2?" asked another. The amateur investigators from the site — having served as a kind of unofficial proving ground for theories that made their way to the mainstream media, jumping on the clear photo, despite the Post story that had also spread on Reddit — were tying the FBI photos to a 22-year-old Brown student and this ABC News report about his having gone missing last month. There was pushback, even on Reddit — "Leave the missing guy alone" — but it was too late; the trolls on Reddit had fed an army of all-nighter trolls in the media.

Read more at Atlantic Wire.

]]>

Why Hasn't the FBI's Facial Recognition Technology Found the Boston Bombers?

Rebecca Greenfield, The Wire — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:11:56 -0400

According to multiple reports, the FBI's investigation into potential perpetrators in the Boston Marathon bombings now centers on "clear video images" that may be released today — possibly without names to faces or answers to America's questions. And while the case is a "fast moving" one with real progress on the horizon, the FBI's newest facial recognition hardware — and even its fancy 3D software — isn't quite the stuff of Hollywood.

The FBI agent in charge of the search has encouraged local business around the crime scene to "review and preserve surveillance video" from what the Boston police commissionercalls "probably one of the most photographed areas in the country," while insisting that investigators will "go through every frame of every video we have." Turns out, the FBI might have had even more and better frames of surveillance footage preserved, but an important — if controversial, and expensive — state-of-the-art ID system is not yet in place across the country.

As for the particulars of the ongoing Boston investigation, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday before a Congressional committee that "there's lots and lots of video. There is some video that has raised the question of those that the FBI would like to speak with. I wouldn't characterize them as suspects under the technical term. But we need the public's help in locating these individuals."

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.

]]>