Posts Tagged technology

U.S. Senator Proposes Gun Law With Unproven Technology

From Boston.com:

The Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts said the technology championed by Markey is often flawed and smart guns ‘‘only work correctly in the movies.’’

‘‘No technology should stand between a lawful gun owner using his/her firearm,’’ the group said in a written statement. ‘‘We also find it more than disingenuous that a senator with very little knowledge of firearms, who has worked to stifle the Second Amendment, would offer mandated technology that gun owners have not asked for, nor supported.’’

 

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EFF Calls On Companies To Enhance Security

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

How to Protect Your Users from NSA Backdoors: An Open Letter to Technology Companies

As security researchers, technologists, and digital rights advocates, we are deeply concerned about collaboration between government agencies and technology companies in undermining users’ security. Among other examples, we are alarmed by recent allegations that RSA, Inc. accepted $10 million from NSA to keep a compromised algorithm in the default setting of a security product long after its faults were revealed. We believe that covert collusion with spy agencies poses a grave threat to users and must be mitigated with commitment to the following best practices to protect users from illegal surveillance: Read the rest of this entry »

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The Back Channel: A Radio Show on Security and Technology

The Back Channel is brought to you by the creators of Silent Circle.

The Back Channel is a cutting edge radio show focused on Technology, Privacy, Security and policy on an international scale. Bringing together luminaries from the technology sector, Hackers, privacy advocates and world-renowned experts in a conversational forum to discuss the intersections of technology, privacy and government. The show itself touches upon controversial topics and digs into tension-filled public policy areas with a list of personalities and luminaries from around the world. Hosted by two world famous cryptographers, a former Navy SEAL and privacy advocate and a Silicon Valley security dilettante -The Back Channel is the one place where both Hackers and Government officials can come and “clear the air”

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Cody Wilson Interview With The Gaurdian

From The Business Insider:

It’s a gun. It works. And any nut with access to a 3D printer can print one in the privacy of their bedroom and then … well, you get the picture. The plans include a metal shank so that it’ll show up in an x-ray scanner, but it is the work of moments to remove it. And while it is an argument that has a different resonance in the US, where any aforesaid nut can simply go out and buy a gun in a shop, and the rights of nuts to go and buy such guns is enshrined in the constitution, even there, it has caused shock waves. In Britain, where we hope our robbers carry nothing more than a big stick and arm our police officers accordingly, it’s a potential societal revolution that none of us asked for.

One must remember that the interviewer is from England and hostile to most of Cody’s ideas and most of The United States’ ideals as well.

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Blackphone Challenging Conventional Wisdom

From the Silent Circle blog:

Blackphone is an innovative new ecosystem. The idea of creating an entirely new ecosystem is not new. Microsoft had its run with Windows, Skype, and Bing. They created an entire ecosystem behind the hardware and software, but failed to innovate ahead of the curve. Blackberry had its run with the phones, BEZ servers and BBM messaging. They are now dying a thousand little deaths because they did not innovate quickly enough. Google, Apple, Samsung and others have created dominant ecosystems that tie in software, hardware, wearables, media, music and services.  They rapidly innovated new platforms and models that left Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia, HTC and others behind quickly. It’s been an amazing run for them, but this model too is dwindling. Fast movers like Xiaomi are killing them. Innovation, security and privacy demands are already putting cracks in this windshield. The fuel that feeds their ecosystem machine is customer data… Your data. It is pure gold to them.

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Revolvr Mobile App Announced

Revolver is currently only available for Android devices.

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SimpliSafe Home Security

CNET recommends the SimpliSafe system for home security.

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Secure Mobile Phone: Blackphone

The company Silent Circle which makes encrypted communication apps for mobile phones will soon release its own hardware called the Blackphone on Feb. 24. It is designed from the ground up to be a secure and encrypted method of communication. They are designing the hardware and creating their own secure version of the Andriod OS.

Press release:

Blackphone, powered by a security-oriented Androidâ„¢ build named PrivatOS, is a carrier- and vendor-independent smartphone giving individuals and organizations the ability to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure texts, transfer and store files, and video chat without compromising user privacy on the device.

It is the culmination of several careers’ worth of effort from leading figures in the industry, including Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP; Javier Aguera, co-founder of Geeksphone; Jon Callas, co-founder of PGP Inc. and CTO of Silent Circle; Rodrigo Silva-Ramos, co-founder of Geeksphone; and Mike Janke, CEO of Silent Circle and former US Navy SEAL.

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Military To Add Mobile Devices To Networks

From FierceMobileIT:

For the first time in U.S. military history, foot soldiers and company support teams in Afghanistan are using specialized handheld mobile devices to access digital maps, exchange information with other troops and store mission-critical information. What began in 2011 as a way to supply soldiers with high-resolution maps on a PDA-type device eventually morphed into a suite of over 50 apps on something that now more closely resembles a mobile phone.

From Military.com:

In May, the Defense Department approved government-issued Apple devices using the iOS 6 operating system to connect to its networks, so long as they are operated within the confines of mobility pilots or a mobile device management (MDM) solution, once that is in place.

Likewise, the Samsung Knox version of Android was approved for use on DoD networks, pending the rollout of an MDM solution, said DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart.

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Philadelphia “Bans” 3-D Printed Guns

PhillyMag:

Today, the Philadelphia City Council voted unanimously to ban the manufacturing of guns by 3-D printers, making Philly the first city to do so. Which is interesting, because the author of the bill, Kenyatta Johnson, isn’t aware of of any local gun-printing 3-D printers. ”It’s all pre-emptive,” says Johnson’s director of legislation Steve Cobb. “It’s just based upon internet stuff out there.”

The first question I have is, how are they going to enforce this? Are they going to issue general warrants to search every house to make sure there are no weapons that have been created? It is obvious that the city council doesn’t know what they are doing. They just want to be seen as doing “something”.

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NICS System vs Healthcare.gov

This graph is from zerohedge.com:

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Some Sanity From California Court on Internet Ammo Sales

From TheTruthAboutGuns.com:

The specific reason why the law was overturned isn’t because they were a violation of the Second Amendment (because what self respecting California judge would ever rule in favor of the 2A?). Instead the California Superior Court decision said the requirements were unconstitutionally vague. Thanks to the various pistol caliber carbines available as well as the pistol version of the AR-15 and the AK-47, it makes it impossible to actually define what a handgun caliber is.

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Silent Circle Comments on the NSA

Here is an excerpt of Silent Circle’s  editorial from their company blog:

We at Silent Circle believe these revelations and disclosures are some of the best things that could happen to the technology sector. In fact, the battle for your digital soul has turned strongly towards Privacy’s corner because we now know what we are up against. We are beginning to define the capabilities and tactics of the world’s surveillance machine. Before all of this -we speculated, guessed and hypothesized that it was bad –we were all way off. It’s horrendous. It’s Orwell’s 1984 on steroids. It doesn’t matter –we will win the war.

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McMillan Merchant Solutions

The company that revolutionized stocks has started a credit card processing company. The new company was created after McMillan‘s bank account at Bank of America was abruptly cancelled without explanation.

More information can be found in this article from World Net Daily.

McMillan Merchant Solutions

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NSA Admits Spying On More People Than Previously Reported

From The Atlantic:

But Inglis’ statement was new. Analysts look “two or three hops” from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with—one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with—two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop.

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