Forbes contributor Kalev Leetaru argues that “the encryption debate is already over — Facebook ended it earlier this year.” The ability of encryption to shield a user’s communications rests upon the assumption that the sender and recipient’s devices are themselves secure, with the encrypted channel the only weak point… [But] Facebook announced earlier this year preliminary results from its efforts to…
Tag: communications
GitHub Starts Blocking Developers In Countries Facing US Trade Sanctions
After a developer based in the Crimea region of Ukraine was blocked from GitHub this week, the Microsoft-owned software development platform said it has started restricting accounts in countries facing U.S. trade sanctions. GitHub lists Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syris as countries facing U.S. sanctions. ZDNet reports: As the developer reports, his website https://tkashkin.tk, which is hosted on GitHub,…
France Is Making Space-Based Anti-Satellite Laser Weapons
France announced plans on Thursday to develop satellites armed with laser weapons that will be used against enemy satellites that threaten the country’s space forces. Popular Mechanics reports: In remarks earlier today, French Defense Minister Florence Parly said, “If our satellites are threatened, we intend to blind those of our adversaries. We reserve the right and the means to be able…
A Bipartisan Bill That Could End Our Robocall Hell Just Passed the House 429-3
The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a nearly unanimous vote, with only two Republicans and one independent voting against the bill. Gizmodo reports: The bill, sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, prescribes strict regulations around the use of automatic telephone dialing systems or other artificial or prerecorded…
You’re Very Easy To Track Down, Even When Your Data Has Been ‘Anonymized’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The most common way public agencies protect our identities is anonymization. This involves stripping out obviously identifiable things such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, and so on. Data sets are also altered to be less precise, columns in spreadsheets are removed, and “noise” is introduced to the data. Privacy policies…
Many Animals Can’t Adapt Fast Enough To Climate Change
A new paper in Nature Communications, coauthored by more than 60 researchers, sifted through 10,000 previous studies and found that the climatic chaos we’ve sowed may just be too intense for many animals to survive. From a report: Some species seem to be adapting, yes, but they aren’t doing so fast enough. That spells, in a word, doom. To determine how…
Is Russia Trying to Deanonymize Tor Traffic?
A contractor for Russia’s intelligence agency suffered a breach, revealing projects they were pursuing — including one to deanonymize Tor traffic. An anonymous reader shared this report from ZDNet: The breach took place last weekend, on July 13, when a group of hackers going by the name of 0v1ru$ hacked into SyTech’s Active Directory server from where they gained access to…
Employers Are Mining the Data Their Workers Generate To Figure Out What They’re Up To, and With Whom
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: To be an employee of a large company in the U.S. now often means becoming a workforce data generator — from the first email sent from bed in the morning to the Wi-Fi hotspot used during lunch to the new business contact added before going home. Employers are parsing those…
US Heat Waves To Skyrocket As Globe Warms, Study Suggests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: As the globe warms in the years ahead, days with extreme heat are forecasted to skyrocket across hundreds of U.S. cities, a new study suggests, perhaps even breaking the “heat index.” By 2050, hundreds of U.S. cities could see an entire month each year with heat index temperatures above 100 degrees if…
FCC Kills Part of San Francisco’s Broadband-Competition Law
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission today voted to preempt part of a San Francisco ordinance that promotes broadband competition in apartment buildings and other multi-tenant structures. But it’s not clear exactly what effect the preemption will have, because San Francisco says the FCC’s Republican majority has misinterpreted what the law does. FCC Chairman…