Las tarjetas del crédito y del debe han tomado el lugar del efectivo para la mayoría de las transacciones modernas. ¿Cuál es siguiente? Según la investigación de Emme Kozloff, un analista de Sanford Bernstein, la energía de comprar la tienda de comestibles pronto estará en sus yemas del dedo.

El centro comercial y Costco de Wal están mirando en sistemas biométricos del pago. Éstos trabajan reconociendo la huella digital de usuarios registrados. Los clientes colocan su yema del dedo en un cojín, después seleccionan que forman del pago que quisieran utilizar - el cheque, el debe, o el crédito. Los autores del nuevo sistema aplauden sus ventajas a la seguridad del cliente y a velocidades más rápidas de la comprobación.

Los críticos del pago biométrico precisan que las huellas digitales están dejadas en todo los tactos de una persona. Sería bastante fácil tomar un pedazo de la cinta y “levante” estas huellas digitales latentes para el uso fraudulento. Hay también preocupación por hacer sus imágenes de la huella digital almacenar en una computadora, pero los vendedores biométricos insisten que las impresiones ellos mismos no están almacenadas. En lugar, las medidas cifradas de las impresiones se guardan. Éstos no permiten la reconstrucción de una impresión llena.

Aconsejan los clientes mantener sus manos limpias al hacer transacciones biométricas. Si las manos son demasiado sucias, la máquina no pudo poder leer la huella digital.

Tarjeta de crédito Blog

Por David Morrison

VALOR de FORTALEZA, Tejas - el banco de OmniAmerican, institución que comenzó vida como unión de crédito de OmniAmerican antes de convertir a una carta de banco en 2005, ha sufrido una abertura de la seguridad de la fecha que permitió que algunos de los depositantes del banco hicieran dinero robar, según informes de prensa locales.

Los medios locales cotizaron a Tim Carretero, presidente del banco anterior del CU, como diciendo que el esquema era “bastante sofisticado.” Carretero se cotiza en Fortaleza digno de telegrama de la estrella como llamar la cantidad mínimo robada y ése el CU anterior tenían menos de 100 cuentas comprometidas.

Nevertheless the bank has placed limits on some ATM and debit card transactions, particularly those outside the state of Texas and had reported to have reissued 40,000 debit cards.

According to the bank, the criminals were able to hack into the bank records and obtain card numbers and personal identification numbers as well as create new PINs. They then fabricated debit cards and withdrew cash from ATMs across Eastern Europe, including Russia.

When the government announced last month that a top-secret spy satellite would, in the next few months, come falling out of the sky, American officials said there was little risk to people because satellites fall out of orbit fairly frequently and much of the planet is covered by oceans.

But they said precious little about the satellite itself.

Such information came instead from Ted Molczan, a hobbyist who tracks satellites from his apartment balcony in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada, and fellow satellite spotters around the world. They have grudgingly become accustomed to being seen as “propeller-headed geeks” who “poke their finger in the eye” of the government’s satellite spymasters, said Molczan, taking no offense. “I have a sense of humor,” he said.

Molczan, a private energy conservation consultant, is the best known of the satellite spotters who, needing little more than a pair of binoculars, a stop watch and star charts, uncover some of the deepest of the government’s expensive secrets and share them on the Internet.

Thousands of people form the spotter community. Many look for historical relics of the early space age, working from publicly available orbital information. Others watch for phenomena like the distinctive flare of sunlight glinting off bright solar panels of some telephone satellites. Still others are drawn to the secretive world of spy satellites, with about a dozen hobbyists who do most of the observing, said Molczan.

In the case of the mysterious satellite that is about to plunge back to earth, Molczan had an early sense of which one it was, identifying it as USA-193, which gave out shortly after reaching space in December 2006. It is said to have been built by the Lockheed Martin Corporation and operated by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). 

Another hobbyist, John Locker, of Britain, posted photos of the satellite on a Web site, galaxypix.com .

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private group in Alexandria, Virginia, that tracks military and space activities, said the hobbyists exemplified fundamental principles of openness and of the power of technology to change the game.

“It has been an important demystification of these things,” said Pike, “because I think there is a tendency on the part of these agencies just to try to pretend that they don’t exist, and that nothing can be known about them.”

The spotters are also pursuing a thoroughly unusual pastime, one that calls for long hours outside, freezing in the winter and sweating in the summer, straining to see a moving light in the sky and hoping that a slip of the finger on the stopwatch does not delete an entire night’s work. And for the adept, there is math. Lots of math.

“It’s somewhat time consuming and tedious,” said Molczan, acknowledging that the precise and methodical activities might seem, to the uninitiated, “a close approximation to work.”

When a new spy satellite is launched, the hobbyists will collaborate on sightings around the world to determine its orbit, and even guess at its function, sharing their information through the e-mail network SeeSat-L, which can be found via the Web site satobs.org . 

From his 23rd-floor balcony, or the roof of his 32-floor building, Molzcan will peer through his binoculars at a point in the sky he expects the satellite to cross, which he locates with star charts. When the moving dot appears, he determines its direction and the distance it travels across the patch of sky over time, which he can use to calculate its speed.

Molzcan declined a request to visit him in Toronto and to be photographed for this article, saying: “No offense intended, but this is beginning to sound like more of a human interest story than one about the substance of the hobby. My preference is for the latter. Also, I prefer not to have photos of myself published.”

Locker, who favors a telescope for his camera work, said that people like him and Molczan were not, as he put it, “nerdy buffs who lie on our backs and look into the sky and try to undermine governments.” Spotting, he said, is simply a hobby.

“There are people who look at train timetables and go watch trains,” he said. People are drawn to what interests them, he said, and “it’s what draws people to any hobby.”

While recent news coverage has focused on the current satellite’s threat to people when it falls from above, that threat is, statistically, very small. Even when the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas five years ago and rained debris over two states, no one on the ground was injured.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, noted that 328 satellites had come down in the past five years without injury to anyone. While Johndroe declined to divulge much about the current satellite aside from the fact that it carries no nuclear material, he said that the government would take responsibility in the remote chance of damage or injury.

The government’s relationship with the hobbyists is not a comfortable one. Spokesmen for the National Reconnaissance Office have stated that they would prefer the hobbyists not publish their information, and suggest that foreign countries try to hide their activities when they know an eye in the sky will be passing overhead.

The satellite spotters acknowledge that this may be so, though they doubt that such tactics are effective. Molczan said he believed that the hobbyists hurt no one but that “you can’t say with absolute certainty what effect you’re having.”

Pike said the officials who complained about the hobbyists “don’t like it, but they’ve got to lump it.” Despite the many clever ways that the spy agencies try to minimize the likelihood that their satellites will be spotted, he said, they will be. And that, he said, is a valuable warning: a world with so many eyes on the skies renders deep secrets shallow.

“If Ted can track all these satellites,” said Pike, “so can the Chinese.”

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=15189

PM hits the streets and gets looked at more than ever before, then heads to the shop for first-look details on a futuristic car so efficient it’ll make your jaw drop. The good news? It’s coming next year.

Three hundred miles per gallon and a Jetsons-style look are enough to get anyone excited. But ever since the word got out on it last month, Aptera’s innovative Typ-1 three-wheeler has been the target of relentless theorizing and conjecture across the Web. Is it real? Does it have what it takes to be a practical vehicle for daily transport? Is it stable enough to drive? Does it even actually drive? Well we wondered some of those things, too, so we scouted out if a drivable prototype really exists.

It does.

This week we visited Aptera’s headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif., and became the very first outside of the company to hit the street in the Typ-1 e. And, as you can see from the video of our 20-mile test drive above, we’re impressed.

Aptera has two innovative models that are almost production-ready at $30,000 and below: for next year, the all-electric, 120-mile-range Typ-1 e that we drove; and, by 2009, the range-extended series gasoline Typ-1 h, which Aptera says will hit 300 mpg. A more conventional third model, called “Project X” or perhaps Typ-2, is now in the design phase, with plans for a four-wheeled chassis and seating up for to five passengers.

For now, though, the Typ-1 will certainly do. Check out a full gallery for the inside scoop on all the specs from the shop and the street …

The Typ-1’s exposed chassis shows how the company has taken inspiration from aircraft, boats and high-performance cars. For durability as well as weight and cost savings, the majority of the Typ-1 is constructed from a top and bottom advanced composite structures bonded together along the midsection. With the top and bottom weighing in at a mere 160 and 180 pounds, respectively, the entire vehicle sits at approximately 1480 pounds today.

The chassis has steel reinforcements in key areas: at the roll hoop, along the bottom of the windshield, in the doors (for side impact protection) and, of course, in the front subframe (for the suspension system as well as the engine and battery cradle).

On the all-electric model, the battery pack lives in the center space of the subframe. A tiny gasoline internal combustion engine in the hybrid models shares that space. In fact, this chassis has part of the hybrid’s exhaust, which you can see just below and to the left of the subframe.

The rear-drive wheel is mounted to a steel swing arm similar to that of motorcycle—but with a design optimized to handle the Aptera’s loads. The rear wheel has 3 in. of up travel and 2 in. of droop.

A belt drive system connects to an electric motor that has regenerative braking to help charge the battery pack. The tires on the prototype are the same 165/65R14 tires from the Honda Insight.

The Typ-1 e is expected to have a target range of 120 miles per charge. A ful1 recharge of the pack will take about 4 to 6 hours with a standard 110-volt outlet. Aptera’s team is still evaluating lithium phosphate battery packs from a few suppliers, so the final specs of the 10-kWh batteries remain confidential. (The hybrid model will use a smaller battery pack.)

This wall of equipment is part of the battery test station. Twin super capacitors augment the battery pack for when you neeed quick boosts of power (think passing stupefied fellow drivers on the highway).

Continue..

Intrusive Brain Reading Surveillance Technology

“We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain. ~~Dr José Delgado. Director of Neuropsychiatry, Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974.

The Guardian newspaper, that defender of truth in the United Kingdom, published an article by the Science Correspondent, Ian Sample, on 9 February 2007 entitled:

‘The Brain Scan that can read people’s intentions’, with the sub-heading: ‘Call for ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation”.

“Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there’s no way you could possibly tell is in there. It’s like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall”, the scientists were reported as saying.

At the same time, London’s Science Museum was holding an exhibition entitled ‘Neurobotics: The Future of Thinking’. This venue had been chosen for the launch in October 2006 of the news that human thoughts could be read using a scanner. Dr Geraint Rees’ smiling face could be seen in a photograph at the Neurobotics website, under the heading “The Mind Reader”. Dr Rees is one of the scientists who have apparently cracked the problem which has preoccupied philosophers and scientists since before Plato: they had made entry into the conscious mind. Such a reversal of human historical evolution, announced in such a pedestrian fashion, makes one wonder what factors have been in play, and what omissions made, in getting together this show, at once banal and extraordinary. The announcement arrives as if out of a vacuum. The neuroscientist - modern-style hunter-gatherer of information and darling of the “Need to Know” policies of modern government - does little to explain how he achieved this goal of entering the conscious mind, nor does he put his work into any historical context. Instead, we are asked in the Science Museum’s programme notes:

How would you feel if someone could read your innermost thoughts? Geraint Rees of UCL says he can. By using brain-imaging technology he’s beginning to decode thought and explore the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind. But how far will it go? And shouldn’t your thoughts remain your personal business?

If Dr Rees has decoded the mind sufficiently for such an announcement to be made in an exhibition devoted to it, presumably somewhere is the mind which has been, and is continuing to be, decoded. He is not merely continuing his experiments using functional magnetic resolution scanning (fMRI) in the way neuroscientists have been observing their subjects under scanning devices for years, asking them to explain what they feel or think while the scientists watch to see which area lights up, and what the cerebral flow in the brain indicates for various brain areas. Dr Rees is decoding the mind in terms of conscious and unconscious processes. For that, one must have accessed consciousness itself. Whose consciousness? Where is the owner of that consciousness – and unconsciousness? How did he/she feel? Why not ask them to tell us how it feels, instead of asking us.

The Neurobotics Exhibition was clearly set up to make these exciting new discoveries an occasion for family fun, and there were lots of games for visitors to play. One gets the distinct impression that we are being softened up for the introduction of radical new technology which will, perhaps, make the mind a communal pool rather than an individual possession. Information technology seeks to connect us all to each other in as many ways as possible, but also, presumably, to those vast data banks which allow government control not only to access all information about our lives, but now also to our thoughts, even to our unconscious processing. Does anyone care?

One of the most popular exhibits was the ‘Mindball’ game, which required two players to go literally head-to-head in a battle for brainpower, and used ‘brainpower’ alone. Strapped up with headbands which pick up brain waves, the game uses neurofeedback, but the person who is calm and relaxed wins the game. One received the impression that this calmness was the spirit that the organisers wished to reinforce, to deflect any undue public panic that might arise from the news that private thoughts could now be read with a scanner. The ingress into the mind as a private place was primarily an event to be enjoyed with the family on an afternoon out:

Imagine being able to control a computer with only the power of your mind. Or read people’s thoughts and know if they’re lying. And what if a magnetic shock to the brain could make you more creative…but should we be able to engineer our minds?Think your thoughts are private? Ever told a lie and been caught red-handed? Using brain-scanning technology, scientists are beginning to probe our minds and tell if we’re lying. Other scientists are decoding our desires and exploring the difference between our conscious and unconscious mind. But can you really trust the technology?

Other searching questions are raised in the program notes, and more games:

Find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a modern-day spy in this new interactive family exhibition. After being recruited as a trainee spy, explore the skills and abilities required by real agents and use some of the latest technologies that help spies gather and analyse information. Later go on and discover what it’s like to be spied upon. Uncover a secret store of prototype gadgets that give you a glimpse into the future of spy technologies and finally use everything you’ve learnt to escape before qualifying as a fully-fledged agent!

There were also demonstrations of grateful paraplegics and quadriplegics showing how the gods of science have so unselfishly liberated them from their prisons: this was the serious Nobel Prize side of the show. But there was no-one representing Her Majesty’s government to demonstrate how these very same devices can be used quite freely, and with relative ease, in our wireless age, to conduct experiments on free-ranging civilians tracked anywhere in the world, and using an infinitely extendable form of electrode which doesn’t require visible contact with the scalp at all. Electrodes, like electricity, can also take an invisible form – an electrode is a terminal of an electric source through which electrical energy or current may flow in or out. The brain itself is an electrical circuit. Every brain has its own unique resonating frequency. The brain is an infinitely more sensitive receiver and transmitter than the computer, and even in the wireless age, the comprehension of how wireless networks operate appears not to extend to the workings of the brain. The monotonous demonstration of scalps with electrodes attached to them, in order to demonstrate the contained conduction of electrical charges, is a scientific fatuity, in so far as it is intended to demonstrate comprehensively the capability of conveying charges to the brain, or for that matter, to any nerve in the body, as a form of invisible torture.

As Neurobotics claims: ‘Your brain is amazing’, but the power and control over brains and nervous systems achieved by targeting brain frequencies with radiowaves must have been secretly amazing government scientists for many years. The problem that now arises, at the point of readiness when so much has been achieved, is how to put the technology into action in such a way, as it will be acceptable in the public domain. This requires getting it through wider government and legal bodies, and for that, it must be seen to spring from the unbiased scientific investigations into the workings of the brain, in the best tradition of the leading universities. It is given over to Dr Rees and his colleague, Professor Haynes, endowed with the disclosure for weightier Guardian readers, to carry the torch for the government. Those involved may also have noted the need to show the neuroscientist in a more responsible light, following US neuroengineer for government sponsored Lockheed Martin, John Norseen’s, ingenuous comment, in 2000, about his belief about the consequences of his work in fMRI:

‘If this research pans out’, said Norseen, ‘you can begin to manipulate what someone is thinking even before they know it.’ And added: “The ethics don’t concern me, but they should concern someone else.”

While the neuroscientists report their discovery (without even so much as the specific frequency of the light employed by this scanner/torch), issuing ethical warnings while incongruously continuing with their mind-blowing work, the government which sponsors them, remains absolutely mute. The present probing of people’s intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions is being expanded into the more complex and subtle aspects of thinking and feeling. We have, however, next to no technical information about their methods. The description of ‘shining a torch around the brain’ is as absurd a report as one could read of a scientific endeavour, especially one that carries such enormous implications for the future of mankind. What is this announcement, with its technical obfuscation, preparing us for?

Writing in Wired contributing editor Steve Silberman points out that the lie-detection capability of fMRI is ‘poised to transform the security system, the judicial system, and our fundamental notions of privacy’. He quotes Cephos founder, Steven Laken, whose company plans to market the new technology for lie detection. Laken cites detainees held without charge at Guantanamo Bay as a potential example. ‘If these detainees have information we haven’t been able to extract that could prevent another 9/11, I think most Americans would agree that we should be doing whatever it takes to extract it’. Silberman also quotes Paul Root Wolpe, a senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, who describes the accelerated advances in fMRI as ‘ a textbook example of how something can be pushed forward by the convergence of basic science, the government directing research through funding, and special interests who desire a particular technology’. Are we to believe that with the implied capability to scan jurors’ brains, the judiciary, the accused and the defendant alike, influencing one at the expense of the other, that the legal implications alone of mind-accessing scanners on university campuses, would not rouse the Minister for Justice from his bench to say a few words about these potential mind weapons?

So what of the ethical debate called for by the busy scientists and the Guardian’s science reporter? Can this technology- more powerful in subverting thought itself than anything in prior history – really be confined to deciding whether the ubiquitously invoked terrorist has had the serious intention of blowing up the train, or whether it was perhaps a foolish prank to make a bomb out of chapatti flour? We can assume that the government would certainly not give the go-ahead to the Science Museum Exhibition, linked to Imperial College, a major government-sponsored institution in laser-physics, if it was detrimental to surveillance programs. It is salutary to bear in mind that government intelligence research is at least ten years ahead of any public disclosure. It is implicit from history that whatever affords the undetectable entry by the gatekeepers of society into the brain and mind, will not only be sanctioned, but funded and employed by the State, more specifically by trained operatives in the security forces, given powers over defenceless citizens, and unaccountable to them.

The actual technology which is now said to be honing the technique ‘to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions’ is described by Professor John-Dylan Haynes in the Guardian in the most disarmingly untechnical language which must surely not have been intended to enlighten.

The Guardian piece ran as follows:

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.

‘Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there’s no way you could possibly tell is in there. It’s like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall,’ said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.

We know therefore that they are using light, but fMRI has been used for many years to attempt the unravelling of neuronal activity, and while there have been many efforts to record conscious and unconscious processes, with particular emphasis on the visual cortex, there has been no progress into consciousness itself. We can be sure that we are not being told the real story.

Just as rats and chimpanzees have been used to demonstrate findings from remote experiments on humans, electrode implants used on cockroaches to remotely control them, lasers used to steer fruit-flies , and worms engineered so that their nerves and muscles can be controlled with pinpricks of light, the information and techniques that have been ruthlessly forged using opportunistic onslaughts on defenceless humans as guinea pigs - used for myriad purposes from creating 3D haptic gloves in computer games to creating artificial intelligence to send visual processing into outer space - require appropriate replication for peer group approval and to meet ethical demands for scientific and public probity.

The use of light to peer into the brain is almost certainly that of terahertz, which occurs in the wavelengths which lie between 30mm and 1mm of the electromagnetic spectrum. Terahertz has the ability to penetrate deep into organic materials, without (it is said) the damage associated with ionising radiation such as x-rays. It can distinguish between materials with varying water content – for example fat versus lean meat. These properties lend themselves to applications in process and quality control as well as biomedical imaging. Terahertz can penetrate bricks, and also human skulls. Other applications can be learnt from the major developer of terahertz in the UK, Teraview, which is in Cambridge, and partially owned by Toshiba.

Efforts to alert human rights’ groups about the loss of the mind as a place to call your own, have met with little discernible reaction, in spite of reports about over decades of the dangers of remote manipulation using technology to access the mind, Dr Nick Begich’s book, Controlling the human mind, being an important recent contribution. A different approach did in fact, elicit a response. When informed of the use of terahertz at Heathrow and Luton airports in the UK to scan passengers, the news that passengers would be revealed naked by a machine which looked directly through their clothes produced a small, but highly indignant, article in the spring 2007 edition of the leading human rights organisation, Liberty. If the reading of the mind met with no protest, seeing through one’s clothes certainly did. It seems humans’ assumption of the mind as a private place has been so secured by evolution that it will take a sustained battle to convince the public that, through events of which we are not yet fully informed, such former innocence has been lost.

Trained light, targeted atomic spectroscopy, the use of powerful magnets to absorb moisture from human tissues, the transfer of radiative energy – these have replaced the microwave harassment which was used to transmit auditory messages directly into the hearing. With the discovery of light to disentangle thousands of neurons and encode signals from the complex circuitry of the brain, present programs will not even present the symptoms which simulated schizoid states. Medically, even if terahertz does not ionise, we do not yet know how the sustained application of intense light will affect the delicate workings of the brain and how cells might be damaged, dehydrated, stretched, obliterated.

This year, 2007, has also brought the news that terahertz lasers small enough to incorporate into portable devices had been developed.

Sandia National Laboratories in the US in collaboration with MIT have produced a transmitter-receiver (transceiver) that enables a number of applications. In addition to scanning for explosives, we may also assume their integration into hand-held communication systems. ‘These semiconductor devices have output powers which previously could only be obtained by molecular gas lasers occupying cubic meters and weighing more than 100kg, or free electron lasers weighing tons and occupying buildings.’ As far back as 1996 the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board predicted that the development of electromagnetic energy sources would ‘open the door for the development of some novel capabilities that can be used in armed conflict, in terrorist/hostage situations, and in training’ and ‘new weapons that offer the opportunity of control of an adversary … can be developed around this concept’.

The surveillance technology of today is the surveillance of the human mind and, through access to the brain and nervous system, the control of behaviour and the body’s functions. The messaging of auditory hallucinations has given way to silent techniques of influencing and implanting thoughts. The development of the terahertz technologies has illuminated the workings of the brain, facilitated the capture of emitted photons which are derived from the visual cortex which processes picture formation in the brain, and enabled the microelectronic receiver which has, in turn, been developed by growing unique semi-conductor crystals. In this way, the technology is now in place for the detection and reading of spectral ‘signatures’ of gases. All humans emit gases. Humans, like explosives, emit their own spectral signature in the form of a gas. With the reading of the brain’s electrical frequency, and of the spectral gas signature, the systems have been established for the control of populations – and with the necessary technology integrated into a cell-phone.

‘We are very optimistic about working in the terahertz electromagnetic spectrum,’ says the principal investigator of the Terahertz Microelectronics Transceiver at Sandia: ‘This is an unexplored area, and a lot of science can come out of it. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of what THz can do to improve national security’.

~~~~~~

Carole Smith was born and educated in Australia, where she gained a Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney University. She trained as a psychoanalyst in London where she has had a private practice. In recent years she has been a researcher into the invasive methods of accessing minds using technological means, and has published papers on the subject.

She has written the first draft of a book entitled: “The Controlled Society”.The ethical implications of building machines to read people’s minds, DISSENT, Issue 25, http://www.dissent.com.au/index.htm

From Carole Smith newcriteria@blueyonder.co.uk Dec 12/07. The Canberra-based magazine DISSENT is sold at selected bookshops and by subscription.

Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the computer systems of two of the U.S.’ most important science labs, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

John E. Dunn

Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the computer systems of two of the U.S.‘ most important science labs, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In what a spokesperson for the Oak Ridge facility described as a “sophisticated cyber attack,” it appears that intruders accessed a database of visitors to the Tennessee lab between 1990 and 2004, which included their social security numbers and dates of birth. Three thousand researchers reportedly visit the lab each year, a who’s who of the science establishment in the U.S.

The attack was described as being conducted through several waves of phishing emails with malicious attachments, starting on Oct. 29. Although not stated, these would presumably have launched Trojans if opened, designed to bypass security systems from within, which raises the likelihood that the attacks were targeted specifically at the lab.

ORNL director, Thom Mason, described the attacks in an email to staff earlier this week as being a “coordinated attempt to gain access to computer networks at numerous laboratories and other institutions across the country.”

“Because of the sensitive nature of this event, the laboratory will be unable for some period to discuss further details until we better understand the full nature of this attack,” he added.

The ORNL has set up a web page giving an official statement on the attacks, with advice to employees and visitors that they should inform credit agencies so as to minimize the possibility of identity theft.

Less is known about the attacks said to have been launched against the ORNL’s sister-institution at Los Alamos, but the two are said to be linked. It has not been confirmed that the latter facility was penetrated successfully, though given that a Los Alamos spokesman said that staff had been notified of an attack on Nov. 9 - days after the earliest attack wave on the ORNL - the assumption has to be that something untoward happened there as well, and probably at other science labs across the U.S.

The ORNL is a multipurpose science lab, a site of technological expertise used in homeland security and military research, and also the site of one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Los Alamos operates a similar multi-disciplinary approach, but specializes in nuclear weapons research, one of only two such sites doing such top-secret work in the U.S.

Los Alamos has a checkered security history, having suffered a sequence of embarrassing breaches in recent years. In August of this year, it was revealed that the lab had released sensitive nuclear research data by email, while in 2006 a drug dealer was allegedly found with a USB stick containing data on nuclear weapons tests.

“This appears to be a new low, even drug dealers can get classified information out of Los Alamos,” Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), said at the time. Two years earlier, the lab was accused of having lost hard disks

The possibility that the latest attacks were the work of fraudsters will be seen by some as optimistic - less positive would be the possibility of a rival government having been involved. Given the apparently coordinated nature of events, speculation will inevitably point to this scenario, with the data theft a cover motivation for more serious incursions.

Iain Thomson

Boeing and Ford have successfully tested a new hydrogen aircraft engine with a simulated flight that lasted nearly four days.

The project, called the High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft, is being run to test the feasibility of having unmanned craft in permanent flight to act as communications systems that can be quickly and cheaply set up where coverage by traditional means isn’t available.

“This test could help convince potential customers that hydrogen-powered aircraft are viable in the near-term,” said Boeing Advanced Systems president George Muellner.

“This is a substantial step towards providing the persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities our customers desire.”

The HALE’s engine is a modified four cylinder Ford engine that can use hydrogen as a fuel and run for extended period. In a simulation chamber the engine ran for nearly four days, powering the craft up to an equivalent of 65,000 feet.

“This simulated flight allows us to showcase the capabilities of Ford’s proprietary hydrogen engine technology and the durability of our four-cylinder engines,” said Gerhard Schmidt, vice president of Ford Research and Advanced Engineering.

“We are very pleased with the results. The gasoline version of this same engine can be found in our Ford Fusion and Escape Hybrid vehicles.”

By John E. Dunn

Large organisations in the UK are being offered a new service that could be the ultimate in physical security – building surveillance via satellite.

The service is the work of two companies, Scyron and Datasat, which have spied a need among large multi-nationals and government agencies to secure remote buildings and assets remotely. Scyron supplies the software analysis element, which can assess threat using satellite imagery, while Datasat has access to a satellite network to supply input for the application.

Scyron - which invested in its partner Datasat in July - uses the example of a shipping company watching over its fleet in any part of the world. If suspicious incidents are recorded, the system can adjust bandwidth to ensure the efficient transfer of images back to its monitoring HQ. It can also be tied into biometric and audio security systems as an extra layer.

Such a service doesn’t come cheap, but then again neither does any remote security analysis. The company claims its approach will still save time and money when compared to manual incident analysis.

In addition to maritime and transport, other industries that might be interested include border controls, utilities, and even the military, though the latter might be expected to have their own systems in place for such security.

“The system gives a solution to the headache of permanently manned controls at numerous locations across the world. It is more targeted as it only alerts to suspicious activity but also in conjunction with satellite – it reaches the parts which others just cannot reach,” said Phil Emmel, Datasat’s managing director.

What the company describes as an ‘entry-level’ system would set an organisation back 50,000 euros, but an accurate cost would depend on the number and type of sites being secured, the company said. The service was demonstrated at the Alarmes, Protection Securite Expo, held this week in Paris.

By William Thomas

The story sounded like a sequel to “Dr. Strangelove”. Leaked by the Pentagon’s news service, Military Affairs to quell scuttlebutt racing through the ranks-and perhaps warn the world-a U.S. Air Force B-52 strategic bomber “mistakenly” loaded with six nuclear cruise missiles took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on August 30, 2007 and flew for more than three hours over at least five states, before landing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

DR. STRANGELOVE VISITS BOURBON STREET
As far as anyone knows, no U.S. aircraft has ever been armed with a full wartime loadout of six nuclear weapons. “Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” declared Representative Markey, co-chair of the House Task Force on Nonproliferation. [AP Sept 5/07; Seattle Times Sept 5/07]

Hans Kristensen, an expert on U.S. nuclear forces, says he knows of no other publicly acknowledged case of live nuclear weapons being flown on bombers since the late 1960s. [http://ace.mu.nu]

Director Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” was released in 1964 Each of the six ACMs carried a “dialable” 150-kiloton W80-1 warhead–for a combined total of 60-times the destructive power of the bomb that melted the city and inhabitants of Hiroshima–over the unsuspecting residents of five states. Depending on the route flown, a half-dozen armed nuclear weapons wafted for three-and-a-half hours over North Dakota and either South Dakota or Minnesota, Nebraska or Missouri, Oklahoma or Arkansas, and Louisiana.

It’s no secret that Dick Cheney and his presidential surrogate intend to bomb Iran into the Kingdom to Come. [BBC News Aug 29/07]

But New Orleans? “What does the government have against Louisiana?” asked a blogger named Lobster Martini. [www.democraticunderground.com]

TOUGH LOVE
The “mistake” was supposedly discovered when the B-52 landed at Barskdale, where the plane should have been secured by an armed security detail. Instead, it simply parked on the flight line, where ground crew noticed the words “nuclear armed” stenciled on the sides of the missiles. [ ]

Three officers confirmed the warheads were, in Bush’s argot, “nucular.” But the mission could have ended in a “broken arrow” nuclear calamity if the bomber had crashed, or inadvertently dropped its ordnance. Munitions, and even entire engines-such as the No. 1 turbine that fell off an American Airlines DC 10 after taking off from Chicago’s O’Hare airport in May, 1979, killing two people on the ground and all 271 people onboard-occasionally drop from underwing pylons in flight. [Chicago Tribune May 26-30/79; National Transportation Safety Board Aircraft Accident Report NSTB-AAR-79-17]

A few other examples: — A B-36 ferrying a nuclear weapon from Biggs Air Force Base, Texas to Kirtland accidentally drops a bomb in the New Mexico desert.

[ww.nuclearfiles.org] – A fighter pilot accidentally dropped a BDU-33 dummy bomb into a house, narrowly missing a family of three. [www.f-117a.com ]

– A 500-pound bomb fell from an FA-18 plane during a routine training exercise and exploded on the edge of a U.S. base 100 miles north of Sarajevo. [ AP July 17/02]

– A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school in New Jersey with 25 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition. [AP Nov 4/04]

– Another U.S. Air Force practice bomb accidentally on the Yorkshire countryside in England. [ BBC Jan 12/04]

– Electromagnetic interference from military transmitters may have caused an F-16 jet to accidentally drop a 500 pound bomb on rural West Georgia. [Montreal Gazette May 12/89]
A crash, mid-air explosion or structural breakup-not uncommon occurrences with heavily-laden B-52s-could have ignited the high explosives used to implode the warheads. The ultimate dirty bomber’s fantasy could have seen plutonium–the deadliest substance ever conjured by humans-raining down over what would become a statewide “national sacrifice zone”, off-limits to all life-forms for more than 4 billion years.

Barksdale AFB is no stranger to nuclear accidents. On July 6, 1959, a C-124 “Flying Boxcar” crashed on takeoff, completely destroying the aircraft and the nuclear weapon it was carrying. [www.cdi.org]

This is a question that we all must think hard about because many Governments and private companies around the world are building up vast databases of personal data, biometrics and more.

The UK Government has already begun the roll out of biometric technology in passports, fingerprinting of school children and is well underway with the the UK National ID card and National Identity Register which will allow private companies and public sector to verify UK citizens using a single card and record all this activity. The UK ID card will also make use of iris scans, DNA and fingerprints. The UK Govt. also embarked on the NHS NPfIT (National Health Service National Programme for IT) in which all patient records will be centralised and can be accessed from anywhere.

Former PM Tony Blair and his successor have already shown their support for a national DNA database holding DNA for every UK citizen and the Home Office IPS (Identity & Passport Service) are also looking at RFID implants.

The UK Govt. like others has a terrible record when it comes to delivering IT projects and recent cases where NHS staff where viewing the records of a celebrity being treated at a different hospital, CSA (Child Support Agency) failing to deliver anything, NHS staff swapping swipe cards and leaving passwords at computer terminals and a report from the US about a company forcing RFID implants upon it’s staff are all signs of what is to come.

Should we be embarking on these projects to use this IT technology to monitor, track, document and watch citizens 24/7?

HM Government and UK citizens have no formal relationship documented in the form of a constitution and this therefore allows this UK Government and future ones the right to use these systems as they like.

What implications for the future?
Do you want the police and Government to know your entire private life?
Is it the job of Govt. to award citizens identity or is it just the job of Govt. to serve the people?

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/forums/0,1000000782,39289511-39001037c-20087441o,00.htm

The UK’s big five mobile phone firms have switched on a payment system that turns handsets into digital wallets. Called PayForIt, the scheme is designed for those buying goods and services with a value of up to £10.

The industry hopes it will be used to pay for ringtones, train tickets, parking fees and eventually as a payment system on web shops and sites.

Any cash spent via the scheme will automatically be added on to a customer’s phone bill.

Cash crunch

The scheme standardises the way phones can be used to make payments so the process is the same no matter which operator a customer has signed up for or which handset they are using.

Mike Short, chairman of the Mobile Data Association, said PayForIt had been developed as an alternative to other systems such as premium rate SMS.

Many people, said Mr Short, were unhappy using that payment system because of past uncertainty about how much they would pay and who they turn to if things go wrong.

“It’s for those customers who have not felt comfortable with mobile transactions or payments,” he said.

Trust in mobile payments would be boosted, said Mr Short because shoppers will know who they are buying from and what they are spending.

Anyone paying for goods with PayForIt will see an information screen that lays out what they have bought, who it has been bought from and how much it will cost.

“It’s about opening up the micro payment choices,” said Mr Short, “but it’s not a total cash replacement.”

PayForIt will appear as a payment option on sites that people can get to via their handset and soon will also appear as a way to pay on websites too, said Mr Short.

Bad experiences have made some wary of paying via handset

Companies such as I-play, Gameloft, EA, Multimap, SonyEricsson and Samsung have become the first to sign up and let people pay using the PayForIt system.

PayForIt was first announced in March 2006 and the official start date for the scheme was 1 September.

“Most big brands would not use premium rate SMS to run their services, it’s not a good experience, it’s not consumer friendly,” said Anuj Khanna, a spokesman for Tanla Mobile which is one of the firms administering payments made via PayForIt.

“It’s entirely geared at the low value, high volume transaction market,” he said.

Paul Hunt, an expert on mobile commerce at consultancy Atos Origin, said there had been many failed attempts to set up similar schemes in the past. He said PayForIt has a good chance of success.

“There’s a much wider age range of mobile users and the capabilities of handsets have changed,” he said. “The click to buy reality is catching up with the hype.”

But, he added, the backers of the scheme had to work hard to distinguish PayForIt from alternatives to ensure people realise how it differs from other schemes.

BBC

Daily Mail

Bank customers could soon enter their PIN codes at cash machines just by looking at the numbers in the right order.

The system is designed to beat fraudsters looking over your shoulder to see which keys you press.

The technology, called EyePassword, is being developed in America - and High Street banks in Britain are already interested in using it.

It works by shining an infrared light on your eye. This stays in the same spot on your eye no matter where you look.

As you gaze at the cash dispenser key pad, your pupil moves. When your eye comes to rest on a number, a camera compares the position of your pupil with the fixed light in your eye.

The system is then able to work out which direction your pupil has moved in and how far and, therefore, which number you are looking at.

EyePassword has a three per cent error rate and it can take six times longer to enter your pin.

But Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have expressed an interest in the technology.

However, its inventor, Manu Kumar, of California’s Stanford University, warned: “There are lots of issues to be resolved, probably the biggest one being cost.”

Computer security specialist Dr Jeff Yan, of Newcastle University, said cash dispensers using EyePassword could cost £5,000, £3,000 more than a conventional ATM.

The Observer

Benefit claimants and job seekers could be forced to take lie detector tests as early as next year after an early review of a pilot scheme exposed 126 benefit cheats in just three months, saving one local authority £110,000.
Last May, the Department for Work and Pensions asked Harrow council in London to undertake a year-long, £63,000 pilot of the ground-breaking Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) technology.

‘We will wait until the end of the formal evaluation period to make a final decision about rolling the technology out across the country but this early review by the council is very positive,’ said a spokesman for the DWP.

Article continues

‘If our own review comes to similar conclusions to Harrow’s, we would like to see this technology rolled out across Britain as soon as possible.’
VRA technology works by measuring slight, inaudible fluctuations in the human voice known as ‘micro-tremors’ that indicate when a speaker delivers words under stress, and when those moments of stress are generated by an attempt to deceive. Voice patterns are analysed and displayed on a computer.

Normal speech ranges in frequency from 8 to 12 hertz. When they are being honest, the average sound is below 10 hertz. When they lie, the stress causes the frequency to rise to above 10 hertz.

‘This technology is successfully used in the insurance industry and analyses changes in a caller’s voice, giving an indication of the level of risk that they are lying,’ said Richard Sheridan from Capita Group which owns the technology and is helping implementation for Harrow council. ‘These changes are measured against the caller’s “normal” voice which is recorded at the beginning of the phone call, ensuring that nervousness or shyness is not a trigger. If the technology flags up a caller as being suspicious, they will be asked to provide extra evidence to support their claim.’

The technology is being tested on people claiming housing or council tax benefit but will be extended at Harrow Jobcentre for other benefits this year. The government claims the technology also improves services.

‘Operators trained in intelligent questioning and behavioural analysis will use the system to identify suspect cases at the start of the claim process, enabling low-risk claimants to be fast-tracked,’ said a DWP spokesman.

Over the past two years the procedure for claiming benefits has been reformed. The claim often begins with a telephone interview, after which people may need to provide evidence and sign forms.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said the system ‘adds to the demonisation of claimants’.

‘Whatever their views on welfare policy, anyone who cares about science and reason should also be alarmed: lie detectors do not work, they are as likely to finger the innocent but nervous as the genuinely guilty,’ he said. ‘Innocent people will account for a majority of those whose claims are delayed while they provide extra evidence.’

Experts in America, where the most comprehensive scrutiny of the technology has taken place, warn that the technology is far from failsafe.

David Ashe, chief deputy of the Virginia Board for Professional and Occupational Regulation, said, ‘The experience of being tested, or of claiming a benefit and being told that your voice is being checked for lies, is inherently stressful.

‘Lie detector tests have a tendency to pass people for whom deception is a way of life and fail those who are scrupulously honest.’

By Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache

A recent federal court decision raises the question of whether antivirus companies may intentionally overlook spyware that is secretly placed on computers by police.

In the case decided earlier this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, federal agents used spyware with a keystroke logger–call it fedware–to record the typing of a suspected Ecstasy manufacturer who used encryption to thwart the police.

A CNET News.com survey of 13 leading antispyware vendors found that not one company acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies. Some, however, indicated that they would not alert customers to the presence of fedware if they were ordered by a court to remain quiet.

Most of the companies surveyed, which covered the range from tiny firms to Symantec and IBM, said they never had received such a court order. The full list of companies surveyed: AVG/Grisoft, Computer Associates, Check Point, eEye, IBM, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, Microsoft, Sana Security, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro and Websense. Only McAfee and Microsoft flatly declined to answer that question. (Click here for the verbatim responses to the survey.)

Because only two known criminal prosecutions in the United States involve police use of key loggers, important legal rules remain unsettled. But key logger makers say that police and investigative agencies are frequent customers, in part because recording keystrokes can bypass the increasingly common use of encryption to scramble communications and hard drives. Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Apple’s OS X include built-in encryption.

Some companies that responded to the survey were vehemently pro-privacy. “Our customers are paying us for a service, to protect them from all forms of malicious code,” said Marc Maiffret, eEye Digital Security’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “It is not up to us to do law enforcement’s job for them so we do not, and will not, make any exceptions for law enforcement malware or other tools.” eEye sells Blink Personal for $25, which includes antivirus and antispyware features.

Others were more conciliatory. Check Point, which makes the popular ZoneAlarm utility, said it would offer federal police the “same courtesy” that it extends to legitimate third-party vendors that request to be whitelisted. A Check Point representative said, though, that the company had “never been” in that situation.

This isn’t exactly a new question. After the last high-profile case in which federal agents turned to a key logger, some security companies allegedly volunteered to ignore fedware. The Associated Press reported in 2001 that “McAfee Corp. contacted the FBI… to ensure its software wouldn’t inadvertently detect the bureau’s snooping software.” McAfee subsequently said the report was inaccurate.

Later that year, the FBI confirmed that it was creating spy software called “Magic Lantern” that would allow agents to inject keystroke loggers remotely through a virus without having physical access to the computer. (In both the recent Ecstasy case and the earlier key logging case involving an alleged mobster, federal agents obtained court orders authorizing them to break into buildings to install key loggers.)

Government agencies and backdoors in technology products have a long and frequently clandestine relationship. One 1995 expose by the Baltimore Sun described how the National Security Agency persuaded a Swiss firm, Crypto, to build backdoors into its encryption devices. In his 1982 book, The Puzzle Palace, author James Bamford described how the NSA’s predecessor in 1945 coerced Western Union, RCA and ITT Communications to turn over telegraph traffic to the feds.

More recently, after the BBC reported last year on supposed talks between the British government and Microsoft, the software maker pledged not to build backdoors into Windows Vista’s encryption functions.

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Cambridge, US, have managed to light a 60-watt light bulb from an energy source seven feet away. They hope the system can be adapted to charge mobile phones, MP3 players, laptops and other appliances. The technology is being dubbed “WiTricity” by the scientists.

Nicola Tesla demonstrated the potential over 100 years ago, in Colorado Springs in 1899 by lighting 200 light bulbs - from 26 miles away.

The new approach involves two coils joined by an invisible resonating magnetic field with one coil attached to a power source acting as a sender unite, the field resonates with a receiver coil.

One coil attached to a power source acts as a sender unit and the field resonates with a receiver coil, inducing a current to flow through it.

Professor Peter Fisher, who helped to conduct the research said: “As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of such wireless power, it would charge automatically, without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside of such a room.”