No Agenda 570 - Festival of Corruption

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 22:02

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

November 29, 2013

NATIONAL IMPAIRED DRIVING PREVENTION MONTH, 2013

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

During the holiday season, Americans join with family, friends, and neighbors to take part in longstanding traditions. For some, those celebrations are tempered by the absence of loved ones taken too soon in traffic crashes involving drugs or alcohol, or caused by distracted driving. During National Impaired Driving Prevention Month, we dedicate ourselves to saving lives and eliminating drunk, drugged, and distracted driving.

Impaired drivers are involved in nearly one-third of all deaths from motor vehicle crashes in the United States, taking almost 30 lives each day. This is unacceptable. My Administration is committed to raising awareness about the dangers of impaired driving, improving screening methods, and ensuring law enforcement has the tools and training to decrease drunk and drugged driving. We are designing effective, targeted prevention programs, and are working to curtail all forms of distracted driving, including texting and cell phone use. To keep the American people safe this holiday season, law enforcement across our Nation will participate in the national Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign from December 13 to January 1. This initiative increases enforcement and reminds us all to consider the consequences of impaired driving.

Everyone has a role to play in keeping our roads safe -- from parents, schools, and businesses to faith-based and community organizations. Together, we can teach young people, friends, and fellow citizens how to avoid a crash brought on by impaired driving. I encourage all Americans to designate a non-drinking driver, plan ahead for alternative transportation, or make arrangements to stay with family and friends before consuming alcohol. Americans should also know what precautions to take if using over-the-counter or prescription medication. For more information, please visit www.WhiteHouse.gov/ONDCP and www.NHTSA.gov/Impaired.

This month and always, let every American drive sober, buckle-up, and avoid distractions while driving. If we take these actions and encourage those around us to do the same, we will save thousands of lives and keep thousands of families whole.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim December 2013 as National Impaired Driving Prevention Month. I urge all Americans to make responsible decisions and take appropriate measures to prevent impaired driving.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-eighth.

BARACK OBAMA

Minority Enterprise Development Week, 2013

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 17:29

A ProclamationThis August, as we marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, we were reminded that the measure of America's progress is not whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a little wider for a few, but whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many. Minority-owned businesses play a crucial part in driving this progress'--not only when their founders pursue their fullest measure of success, but also when they offer employees of all backgrounds a chance to enter the ranks of the American middle class. During Minority Enterprise Development Week, we recognize the strength of our diverse workforce and the many ways minority entrepreneurs contribute to our economy, our society, and our Nation's fundamental promise.

America's minority enterprises include everything from Main Street cornerstones that sustain communities to global firms that drive innovation in the industries of tomorrow. Together, these businesses employ almost 6 million Americans and contribute 1 trillion dollars to our economy every year. Minority entrepreneurs bring unique perspectives to every corner of our country, and their understanding of diverse cultures often gives them an advantage in the international marketplace.

As our economy continues to recover, our investments in minority owned and operated firms will help create jobs, strengthen families, and build ladders of opportunity in underserved communities. Over the past 5 years, my Administration has worked to empower minority entrepreneurs by connecting them with billions of dollars in contracts and access to capital. And to better serve America's business community, we launched www.Business.USA.gov, where any firm can seek out financing opportunities, navigate Federal bureaucracy, and cut through red tape.

This week, we celebrate America's minority enterprises, renew our commitment to helping them grow, and look with pride toward the promise of the future.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim December 1 through December 7, 2013, as Minority Enterprise Development Week. I call upon all Americans to celebrate this week with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities to recognize the many contributions of our Nation's minority enterprises.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-sixth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-eighth.

[FR Doc. 2013-28992Filed 11-29-13; 11:15 am]

Billing code 3295-F4

Presidential Determination -- Iran Oil

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) - IMDb

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Sun, 01 Dec 2013 03:27

7 wins & 8 nominations.See more awards >>Learn morePeople who liked this also liked... Comedy | Crime | Romance

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A phobic con artist and his prot(C)g(C) are on the verge of pulling off a lucrative swindle when the former's teenage daughter arrives unexpectedly.

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A studio executive is being blackmailed by a writer whose script he rejected but which one? Loaded with Hollywood insider jokes.

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Three friends discover their new flatmate dead but loaded with cash.

Director: Danny Boyle

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Martin Blank is a professional assassin. He is sent on a mission to a small Detroit suburb, Grosse Pointe, and, by coincidence, his ten-year high school reunion party is taking place there at the same time.

Director: George Armitage

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Biography | Crime | Drama

A somewhat romanticized account of the career of the notoriously violent bank robbing couple and their gang.

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Biography | Drama

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Director: Sacha Gervasi

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Director: Paul Haggis

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A globetrotting hitman and a crestfallen businessman meet in a hotel bar in Mexico City in an encounter that draws them together in a way neither expected.

Director: Richard Shepard

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Two bank robbers fall in love with the girl they've kidnapped.

Director: Barry Levinson

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Based on the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1958, in which a fifteen-year-old girl and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

Director: Terrence Malick

Stars: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates

EditStorylineTelevision made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen. "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is the story of a legendary showman's double life - television producer by day, CIA assassin by night. At the height of his TV career, Chuck Barris was recruited by the CIA and trained to become a covert operative. Or so Barris said. Written by Anonymous

Plot Summary|Plot SynopsisTaglines:His future was uncertain. His every move was being watched. See more >>EditDetailsRelease Date:24 January 2003 (USA) See more >>Also Known As:Confesiones de una mente peligrosa See more >>Box OfficeBudget:$29,000,000 (estimated)

See more >>Company CreditsTechnical SpecsRuntime:113 min

Aspect Ratio:2.35 : 1

See full technical specs >>EditDid You Know?TriviaMost of the scenes were done in one take. The NBC lobby scene, and The Dating Game (1965) montage are done completely in one take; the actors ran around to get into position. See more >>GoofsThe same extras are used for different scenes. When Chuck Barris is in the cinema you can see the same man as later in the audience with one of chuck's quiz shows. See more >>Quotes[first lines]Dick Clark: I wouldn't want to live his life because he hasn't been happy all of his life. All I think is if you can find work, stay healthy, find somebody to share it with, you're the ultimate success. He's had some of the pieces of the puzzle, but not all of them.See more >>ConnectionsFeatures The Gong Show (1976) See more >>SoundtracksDandy ClubSee more >>

Barbecue Biscuits & Beans: Chuck Wagon Cooking:Amazon:Books

Britten omarmen Black Friday - Economie - Reformatorisch Dagblad

Micky's TDay was ruined by our Butterball Salmon chat

Attorney General Eric Holder seeks Operation Fast and Furious appeal - POLITICO.com

'Fast & Furious' star Paul Walker killed in car crash - CNN.com

The suspiciously simple strategy behind the ''best performing hedge fund in history'' '' Quartz

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 06:49

With the poor performance of hedge funds'--which so far have lagged behind benchmark equity indices in each quarter of 2013'--it's no wonder a fund would be breathless in promoting its money-making results. In a press release titled ''The best performing fund in history'' Malta-based brokerage Exante touts one of its funds as as ''the best performing hedge fund year to date (2013) with a return of 4847%.''

What was the strategy that the fund used to turn a hypothetical '‚¬10,000 investment into '‚¬494,700 in less than 11 months? Bitcoin'--and only bitcoin.

What Exante calls a ''hedge fund'' is really more like an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that isn't publicly traded (but still regulated). Exante's Bitcoin Fund doesn't have a unique investment approach'--it buys bitcoins with money invested into the fund and sells bitcoins when money is withdrawn. A fund unit equals the price of one bitcoin, always. Despite requiring no discretionary management, the fund charges a 1.75% per year management fee and 0.5% transaction fee. It's not open to all investors; only those with a certain level of experience or wealth can apply.

A hedge fund typically charges a 2% management fee and 20% of profit. But hedge funds justify these fees as the cost of active management, or the cost to access a proprietary strategy. Exante's bitcoin fund appears to involve neither of those. Compared to ETFs, where the average ''expense ratio'' is well below 1% and few are above 1.5%, its fees are expensive. And unlike, say, a gold ETF, which lets you invest in gold without the headache of buying, storing and securing the stuff, an ETF-style bitcoin fund merely replicates something you can do yourself'--buy and sell bitcoin'--with a computer and a modicum of work. So why not just invest in bitcoin directly and save the fees?

Exante told Quartz, ''underlying physical coins are kept safe for you by an expert team: georedundancy, state of art crypto, no single point of failure.'' On the webpage promoting the fund it says its solution is also more convenient and ''You can't accidentally delete Bitcoins in your fund.''

All of which may be true'--but it still seems a high fee for something that basically runs itself, and is significantly less laborious than hauling bars of gold. Then again, if you're enough of a risk-taker enough to invest in a currency that's nearly sextupled in value in the last month and could drop again just as fast, you probably don't care too much about someone shaving off a couple of extra percentage points off your winnings'--or losses.

How To Make A Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash

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How To Make A Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic CashAnonymous: Fried, Frank got NSA's permission to make this report available. They have offered to make copies available by contacting them at or (202) 639-7200. See: http://www.ffhsj.com/bancmail/21starch/961017.htm

Received October 31, 1996

With the Compliments of Thomas P. Vartanian

Fried, Frank, Harris, Schriver & Jacobson

1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20004-2505

Telephone: (202) 639-7200

Laurie Law, Susan Sabett, Jerry Solinas

National Security Agency Office of Information Security Research and Technology

Cryptology Division

18 June 1996

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. WHAT IS ELECTRONIC CASH?

1.1 Electronic Payment

1.2 Security of Electronic Payments

1.3 Electronic Cash

1.4 Multiple Spending

2. A CRYPTOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION

2.1 Public-Key Cryptographic Tools

2.2 A Simplified Electronic Cash Protocol

2.3 Untraceable Electronic Payments

2.4 A Basic Electronic Cash Protocol

3. PROPOSED OFF-LINE IMPLEMENTATIONS

3.1 Including Identifying Information

3.2 Authentication and Signature Techniques

3.3 Summary of Proposed Implementations

4. OPTIONAL FEATURES OF OFF-LINE CASH

4. 1 Transferability

4.2 Divisibility

5. SECURITY ISSUES

5.1 Multiple Spending Prevention

5.2 Wallet Observers

5.3 Security Failures

5.4 Restoring Traceability

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

With the onset of the Information Age, our nation is becoming increasingly dependent upon network communications. Computer-based technology is significantly impacting our ability to access, store, and distribute information. Among the most important uses of this technology is electronic commerce: performing financial transactions via electronic information exchanged over telecommunications lines. A key requirement for electronic commerce is the development of secure and efficient electronic payment systems. The need for security is highlighted by the rise of the Internet, which promises to be a leading medium for future electronic commerce.

Electronic payment systems come in many forms including digital checks, debit cards, credit cards, and stored value cards. The usual security features for such systems are privacy (protection from eavesdropping), authenticity (provides user identification and message integrity), and nonrepudiation (prevention of later denying having performed a transaction) .

The type of electronic payment system focused on in this paper is electronic cash. As the name implies, electronic cash is an attempt to construct an electronic payment system modelled after our paper cash system. Paper cash has such features as being: portable (easily carried), recognizable (as legal tender) hence readily acceptable, transferable (without involvement of the financial network), untraceable (no record of where money is spent), anonymous (no record of who spent the money) and has the ability to make "change." The designers of electronic cash focused on preserving the features of untraceability and anonymity. Thus, electronic cash is defined to be an electronic payment system that provides, in addition to the above security features, the properties of user anonymity and payment untraceability..

In general, electronic cash schemes achieve these security goals via digital signatures. They can be considered the digital analog to a handwritten signature. Digital signatures are based on public key cryptography. In such a cryptosystem, each user has a secret key and a public key. The secret key is used to create a digital signature and the public key is needed to verify the digital signature. To tell who has signed the information (also called the message), one must be certain one knows who owns a given public key. This is the problem of key management, and its solution requires some kind of authentication infrastructure. In addition, the system must have adequate network and physical security to safeguard the secrecy of the secret keys.

This report has surveyed the academic literature for cryptographic techniques for implementing secure electronic cash systems. Several innovative payment schemes providing user anonymity and payment untraceability have been found. Although no particular payment system has been thoroughly analyzed, the cryptography itself appears to be sound and to deliver the promised anonymity.

These schemes are far less satisfactory, however, from a law enforcement point of view. In particular, the dangers of money laundering and counterfeiting are potentially far more serious than with paper cash. These problems exist in any electronic payment system, but they are made much worse by the presence of anonymity. Indeed, the widespread use of electronic cash would increase the vulnerability of the national financial system to Information Warfare attacks. We discuss measures to manage these risks; these steps, however, would have the effect of limiting the users' anonymity.

This report is organized in the following manner. Chapter 1 defines the basic concepts surrounding electronic payment systems and electronic cash. Chapter 2 provides the reader with a high level cryptographic description of electronic cash protocols in terms of basic authentication mechanisms. Chapter 3 technically describes specific implementations that have been proposed in the academic literature. In Chapter 4, the optional features of transferability and divisibility for off-line electronic cash are presented. Finally, in Chapter 5 the security issues associated with electronic cash are discussed.

The authors of this paper wish to acknowledge the following people for their contribution to this research effort through numerous discussions and review of this paper: Kevin Igoe, John Petro, Steve Neal, and Mel Currie.

We begin by carefully defining "electronic cash." This term is often applied to any electronic payment scheme that superficially resembles cash to the user. In fact, however, electronic cash is a specific kind of electronic payment scheme, defined by certain cryptographic properties. We now focus on these properties.

1.1 Electronic Payment

The term electronic commerce refers to any financial transaction involving the electronic transmission of information. The packets of information being transmitted are commonly called electronic tokens. One should not confuse the token, which is a sequence of bits, with the physical media used to store and transmit the information.

We will refer to the storage medium as a card since it commonly takes the form of a wallet-sized card made of plastic or cardboard. (Two obvious examples are credit cards and ATM cards.) However, the "card" could also be, e.g., a computer memory.

A particular kind of electronic commerce is that of electronic payment. An electronic payment protocol is a series of transactions, at the end of which a payment has been made, using a token issued by a third party. The most common example is that of credit cards when an electronic approval process is used. Note that our definition implies that neither payer nor payee issues the token.l

The electronic payment scenario assumes three kinds of players:2

a payer or consumer, whom we will name Alice.a payee, such as a merchant. We will name the payee Bob.a financial network with whom both Alice and Bob have accounts. We will informally refer to the financial network as the Bank.__________

1 In this sense, electronic payment differs from such systems as prepaid phone cards and subway fare cards, where the token is issued by the payee.

2 In 4.1, we will generalize this scenario when we discuss transfers.

1.2 Security of Electronic Payments

With the rise of telecommunications and the Internet, it is increasingly the case that electronic commerce takes place using a transmission medium not under the control of the financial system. It is therefore necessary to take steps to insure the security of the messages sent along such a medium.

The necessary security properties are:

Privacy, or protection against eavesdropping. This is obviously of importance for transactions involving, e.g., credit card numbers sent on the Internet.User identification, or protection against impersonation. Clearly, any scheme for electronic commerce must require that a user knows with whom she is dealing (if only as an alias or credit card number).Message integrity, or protection against tampering or substitution. One must know that the recipient's copy of the message is the same as what was sent.Nonrepudiation, or protection against later denial of a transaction. This is clearly necessary for electronic commerce, for such things as digital receipts and payments.The last three properties are collectively referred to as authenticity.

These security features can be achieved in several ways. The technique that is gaining widespread use is to employ an authentication infrastructure. In such a setup, privacy is attained by enciphering each message, using a private key known only to the sender and recipient. The authenticity features are attained via key management, e.g., the system of generating, distributing and storing the users' keys.

Key management is carried out using a certification authority, or a trusted agent who is responsible for confirming a user's identity. This is done for each user (including banks) who is issued a digital identity certificate. The certificate can be used whenever the user wishes to identify herself to another user. In addition, the certificates make it possible to set up a private key between users in a secure and authenticated way. This private key is then used to encrypt subsequent messages. This technique can be implemented to provide any or all of the above security features.

Although the authentication infrastructure may be separate from the electronic-commerce setup, its security is an essential component of the security of the electronic-commerce system. Without a trusted certification authority and a secure infrastructure, the above four security features cannot be achieved, and electronic commerce becomes impossible over an untrusted transmission medium.

We will assume throughout the remainder of this paper that some authentication infrastructure is in place, providing the four security features.

1.3 Electronic Cash

We have defined privacy as protection against eavesdropping on one's communications. Some privacy advocates such as David Chaum (see [2],[3]), however, define the term far more expansively. To them, genuine "privacy" implies that one's history of purchases not be available for inspection by banks and credit card companies (and by extension the government). To achieve this, one needs not just privacy but anonymity. In particular, one needs

payer anonymity during payment,payment untraceability so that the Bank cannot tell whose money is used in a particular payment.These features are not available with credit cards. Indeed, the only conventional payment system offering it is cash. Thus Chaum and others have introduced electronic cash (or digital cash), an electronic payment system which offers both features. The sequence of events in an electronic cash payment is as follows:

withdrawal, in which Alice transfers some of her wealth from her Bank account to her card.payment, in which Alice transfers money from her card to Bob's.deposit, in which Bob transfers the money he has received to his Bank account.(See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The three types of transactions in a basic electronic cash model.

These procedures can be implemented in either of two ways:

On-line payment means that Bob calls the Bank and verifies the validity of Alice's token3 before accepting her payment and delivering his merchandise. (This resembles many of today's credit card transactions.)Off-line payment means that Bob submits Alice's electronic coin for verification and deposit sometime after the payment transaction is completed. (This method resembles how we make small purchases today by personal check.)Note that with an on-line system, the payment and deposit are not separate steps. We will refer to on-line cash and off-line cash schemes, omitting the word "electronic" since there is no danger of confusion with paper cash.

__________

3 In the context of electronic cash, the token is usually called an electronic coin.

1.4 Counterfeiting

As in any payment system, there is the potential here for criminal abuse, with the intention either of cheating the financial system or using the payment mechanism to facilitate some other crime. We will discuss some of these problems in 5. However, the issue of counterfeiting must be considered here, since the payment protocols contain built-in protections against it.

There are two abuses of an electronic cash system analogous to counterfeiting of physical cash:

Token forgery, or creating a valid-looking coin without making a corresponding Bank withdrawal.Multiple spending, or using the same token over again. Since an electronic coin consists of digital information, it is as valid-looking after it has been spent as it was before. (Multiple spending is also commonly called re-spending, double spending, and repeat spending.)One can deal with counterfeiting by trying to prevent it from happening, or by trying to detect it after the fact in a way that identifies the culprit. Prevention clearly is preferable, all other things being equal.

Although it is tempting to imagine electronic cash systems in which the transmission and storage media are secure, there will certainly be applications where this is not the case. (An obvious example is the Internet, whose users are notoriously vulnerable to viruses and eavesdropping.) Thus we need techniques of dealing with counterfeiting other than physical security.

To protect against token forgery, one relies on the usual authenticity functions of user identification and message integrity. (Note that the "user" being identified from the coin is the issuing Bank, not the anonymous spender.)To protect against multiple spending, the Bank maintains a database of spent electronic coins. Coins already in the database are to be rejected for deposit. If the payments are on-line, this will prevent multiple spending. If off-line, the best we can do is to detect when multiple spending has occurred. To protect the payee, it is then necessary to identify the payer. Thus it is necessary to disable the anonymity mechanism in the case of multiple spending.The features of authenticity, anonymity, and multiple-spender exposure are achieved most conveniently using public-key cryptography. We will discuss how this is done in the next two chapters.

In this chapter, we give a high-level description of electronic cash protocols in terms of basic authentication mechanisms. We begin by describing these mechanisms, which are based on public-key cryptography. We then build up the protocol gradually for ease of exposition. We start with a simplified scheme which provides no anonymity. We then incorporate the payment untraceability feature, and finally the payment anonymity property. The result will be a complete electronic cash protocol.

2.1 Public-Key Cryptographic Tools

We begin by discussing the basic public-key cryptographic techniques upon which the electronic cash implementations are based.

One-Way Functions. A one-way function is a correspondence between two sets which can be computed efficiently in one direction but not the other. In other words, the function phi is one-way if, given s in the domain of phi, it is easy to compute t = phi(s), but given only t, it is hard to find s. (The elements are typically numbers, but could also be, e.g., points on an elliptic curve; see [10].)

Key Pairs. If phi is a one-way function, then a key pair is a pair s, t related in some way via phi. We call s the secret key and t the public key. As the names imply, each user keeps his secret key to himself and makes his public key available to all. The secret key remains secret even when the public key is known, because the one-way property of phi insures that t cannot be computed from s.

All public-key protocols use key pairs. For this reason, public-key cryptography is often called asymmetric cryptography. Conventional cryptography is often called symmetric cryptography, since one can both encrypt and decrypt with the private key but do neither without it.

Signature and Identification. In a public key system, a user identifies herself by proving that she knows her secret key without revealing it. This is done by performing some operation using the secret key which anyone can check or undo using the public key. This is called identification. If one uses a message as well as one's secret key, one is performing a digital signature on the message. The digital signature plays the same role as a handwritten signature: identifying the author of the message in a way which cannot be repudiated, and confirming the integrity of the message.

Secure Hashing. A hash function is a map from all possible strings of bits of any length to a bit string of fixed length. Such functions are often required to be collision-free: that is, it must be computationally difficult to find two inputs that hash to the same value. If a hash function is both one-way and collision-free, it is said to be a secure hash.

The most common use of secure hash functions is in digital signatures. Messages might come in any size, but a given public-key algorithm requires working in a set of fixed size. Thus one hashes the message and signs the secure hash rather than the message itself. The hash is required to be one-way to prevent signature forgery, i.e., constructing a valid-looking signature of a message without using the secret key.4 The hash must be collision-free to prevent repudiation, i.e., denying having signed one message by producing another message with the same hash.

__________

4 Note that token forgery is not the same thing as signature forgery. Forging the Bank's digital signature without knowing its secret key is one way of committing token forgery, but not the only way. A bank employee or hacker, for instance, could "borrow" the Bank's secret key and validly sign a token. This key compromise scenario is discussed in 5.3.

2.2 A Simplified Electronic Cash Protocol

We now present a simplified electronic cash system, without the anonymity features.

PROTOCOL 1:On-line electronic payment.

Withdrawal:

Alice sends a withdrawal request to the Bank.

Bank prepares an electronic coin and digitally signs it.

Bank sends coin to Alice and debits her account.

Payment/Deposit:

Alice gives Bob the coin.

Bob contacts Bank5 and sends coin.

Bank verifies the Bank's digital signature.

Bank verifies that coin has not already been spent.

Bank consults its withdrawal records to confirm Alice's withdrawal. (optional)

Bank enters coin in spent-coin database.

Bank credits Bob's account and informs Bob.

Bob gives Alice the merchandise.

__________

5 One should keep in mind that the term "Bank" refers to the financial system that issues and clears the coins. For example, the Bank might be a credit card company, or the overall banking system. In the latter case, Alice and Bob might have separate banks. If that is so, then the "deposit" procedure is a little more complicated: Bob's bank contacts Alice's bank, "cashes in" the coin, and puts the money in Bob's account.

PROTOCOL 2:Off-line electronic payment.

Withdrawal:

Alice sends a withdrawal request to the Bank.

Bank prepares an electronic coin and digitally signs it.

Bank sends coin to Alice and debits her account.

Payment:

Alice gives Bob the coin.

Bob verifies the Bank's digital signature. (optional)

Bob gives Alice the merchandise.

Deposit:

Bob sends coin to the Bank.

Bank verifies the Bank's digital signature.

Bank verifies that coin has not already been spent.

Bank consults its withdrawal records to confirm Alice's withdrawal. (optional)

Bank enters coin in spent-coin database.

Bank credits Bob's account.

The above protocols use digital signatures to achieve authenticity. The authenticity features could have been achieved in other ways, but we need to use digital signatures to allow for the anonymity mechanisms we are about to add.

2.3 Untraceable Electronic Payments

In this section, we modify the above protocols to include payment untraceability. For this, it is necessary that the Bank not be able to link a specific withdrawal with a specific deposit.6 This is accomplished using a special kind of digital signature called a blind signature.

We will give examples of blind signatures in 3.2, but for now we give only a high-level description. In the withdrawal step, the user changes the message to be signed using a random quantity. This step is called "blinding" the coin, and the random quantity is called the blinding factor. The Bank signs this random-looking text, and the user removes the blinding factor. The user now has a legitimate electronic coin signed by the Bank. The Bank will see this coin when it is submitted for deposit, but will not know who withdrew it since the random blinding factors are unknown to the Bank. (Obviously, it will no longer be possible to do the checking of the withdrawal records that was an optional step in the first two protocols.)

Note that the Bank does not know what it is signing in the withdrawal step. This introduces the possibility that the Bank might be signing something other than what it is intending to sign. To prevent this, we specify that a Bank's digital signature by a given secret key is valid only as authorizing a withdrawal of a fixed amount. For example, the Bank could have one key for a $10 withdrawal, another for a $50 withdrawal, and so on.7

_________

6 In order to achieve either anonymity feature, it is of course necessary that the pool of electronic coins be a large one.

7 0ne could also broaden the concept of "blind signature" to include interactive protocols where both parties contribute random elements to the message to be signed. An example of this is the "randomized blind signature" occurring in the Ferguson scheme discussed in 3.3.

PROTOCOL 3:Untraceable On-line electronic payment.

Withdrawal:

Alice creates an electronic coin and blinds it.

Alice sends the blinded coin to the Bank with a withdrawal request.

Bank digitally signs the blinded coin.

Bank sends the signed blinded coin to Alice and debits her account.

Alice unblinds the signed coin.

Payment/Deposit:

Alice gives Bob the coin.

Bob contacts Bank and sends coin.

Bank verifies the Bank's digital signature.

Bank verifies that coin has not already been spent.

Bank enters coin in spent-coin database.

Bank credits Bob's account and informs Bob.

Bob gives Alice the merchandise.

PROTOCOL 4:Untraceable Off-line electronic payment.

Withdrawal:

Alice creates an electronic coin and blinds it.

Alice sends the blinded coin to the Bank with a withdrawal request.

Bank digitally signs the blinded coin.

Bank sends the signed blinded coin to Alice and debits her account.

Alice unblinds the signed coin.

Payment:

Alice gives Bob the coin.

Bob verifies the Bank's digital signature. (optional)

Bob gives Alice the merchandise.

Deposit:

Bob sends coin to the Bank.

Bank verifies the Bank's digital signature.

Bank verifies that coin has not already been spent.

Bank enters coin in spent-coin database.

Bank credits Bob's account.

2.4 A Basic Electronic Cash Protocol

We now take the final step and modify our protocols to achieve payment anonymity. The ideal situation (from the point of view of privacy advocates) is that neither payer nor payee should know the identity of the other. This makes remote transactions using electronic cash totally anonymous: no one knows where Alice spends her money and who pays her.

It turns out that this is too much to ask: there is no way in such a scenario for the consumer to obtain a signed receipt. Thus we are forced to settle for payer anonymity.

If the payment is to be on-line, we can use Protocol 3 (implemented, of course, to allow for payer anonymity). In the off-line case, however, a new problem arises. If a merchant tries to deposit a previously spent coin, he will be turned down by the Bank, but neither will know who the multiple spender was since she was anonymous. Thus it is necessary for the Bank to be able to identify a multiple spender. This feature, however, should preserve anonymity for law-abiding users.

The solution is for the payment step to require the payer to have, in addition to her electronic coin, some sort of identifying information which she is to share with the payee. This information is split in such a way that any one piece reveals nothing about Alice's identity, but any two pieces are sufficient to fully identify her.

This information is created during the withdrawal step. The withdrawal protocol includes a step in which the Bank verifies that the information is there and corresponds to Alice and to the particular coin being created. (To preserve payer anonymity, the Bank will not actually see the information, only verify that it is there.) Alice carries the information along with the coin until she spends it.

At the payment step, Alice must reveal one piece of this information to Bob. (Thus only Alice can spend the coin, since only she knows the information.) This revealing is done using a challenge-response protocol. In such a protocol, Bob sends Alice a random "challenge" quantity and, in response, Alice returns a piece of identifying information. (The challenge quantity determines which piece she sends.) At the deposit step, the revealed piece is sent to the Bank along with the coin. If all goes as it should, the identifying information will never point to Alice. However, should she spend the coin twice, the Bank will eventually obtain two copies of the same coin, each with a piece of identifying information. Because of the randomness in the challenge-response protocol, these two pieces will be different. Thus the Bank will be able to identify her as the multiple spender. Since only she can dispense identifying information, we know that her coin was not copied and re-spent by someone else.

PROTOCOL 5:Off-line cash.

Withdrawal:

Alice creates an electronic coin, including identifying information.

Alice blinds the coin.

Alice sends the blinded coin to the Bank with a withdrawal request.

Bank verifies that the identifying information is present.

Bank digitally signs the blinded coin.

Bank sends the signed blinded coin to Alice and debits her account.

Alice unblinds the signed coin.

Payment:

Alice gives Bob the coin.

Bob verifies the Bank's digital signature.

Bob sends Alice a challenge.

Alice sends Bob a response (revealing one piece of identifying info).

Bob verifies the response.

Bob gives Alice the merchandise.

Deposit:

Bob sends coin, challenge, and response to the Bank.

Bank verifies the Bank's digital signature.

Bank verifies that coin has not already been spent.

Bank enters coin, challenge, and response in spent-coin database.

Bank credits Bob's account.

Note that, in this protocol, Bob must verify the Bank's signature before giving Alice the merchandise. In this way, Bob can be sure that either he will be paid or he will learn Alice's identity as a multiple spender.

Having described electronic cash in a high-level way, we now wish to describe the specific implementations that have been proposed in the literature. Such implementations are for the off-line case; the on-line protocols are just simplifications of them. The first step is to discuss the various implementations of the public-key cryptographic tools we have described earlier.

3.1 Including Identifying Information

We must first be more specific about how to include (and access when necessary) the identifying information meant to catch multiple spenders. There are two ways of doing it: the cut-and-choose method and zero-knowledge proofs.

Cut and Choose. When Alice wishes to make a withdrawal, she first constructs and blinds a message consisting of K pairs of numbers, where K is large enough that an event with probability 2-K will never happen in practice. These numbers have the property that one can identify Alice given both pieces of a pair, but unmatched pieces are useless. She then obtains signature of this blinded message from the Bank. (This is done in such a way that the Bank can check that the K pairs of numbers are present and have the required properties, despite the blinding.)

When Alice spends her coins with Bob, his challenge to her is a string of K random bits. For each bit, Alice sends the appropriate piece of the corresponding pair. For example, if the bit string starts 0110. . ., then Alice sends the first piece of the first pair, the second piece of the second pair, the second piece of the third pair, the first piece of the fourth pair, etc. When Bob deposits the coin at the Bank, he sends on these K pieces.

If Alice re-spends her coin, she is challenged a second time. Since each challenge is a random bit string, the new challenge is bound to disagree with the old one in at least one bit. Thus Alice will have to reveal the other piece of the corresponding pair. When the Bank receives the coin a second time, it takes the two pieces and combines them to reveal Alice's identity.

Although conceptually simple, this scheme is not very efficient, since each coin must be accompanied by 2K large numbers.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs. The term zero-knowledge proof refers to any protocol in public-key cryptography that proves knowledge of some quantity without revealing it (or making it any easier to find it). In this case, Alice creates a key pair such that the secret key points to her identity. (This is done in such a way the Bank can check via the public key that the secret key in fact reveals her identity, despite the blinding.) In the payment protocol, she gives Bob the public key as part of the electronic coin. She then proves to Bob via a zero-knowledge proof that she possesses the corresponding secret key. If she responds to two distinct challenges, the identifying information can be put together to reveal the secret key and so her identity.

3.2 Authentication and Signature Techniques

Our next step is to describe the digital signatures that have been used in the implementations of the above protocols, and the techniques that have been used to include identifying information.

There are two kinds of digital signatures, and both kinds appear in electronic cash protocols. Suppose the signer has a key pair and a message M to be signed.

Digital Signature with Message Recovery. For this kind of signature, we have a signing function SSK using the secret key SK, and a verifying function VPK using the public key PK. These functions are inverses, so that(*) VPK (SSK (M)) = M

The function VPK is easy to implement, while SSK is easy if one knows SK and difficult otherwise. Thus SSK is said to have a trapdoor, or secret quantity that makes it possible to perform a cryptographic computation which is otherwise infeasible. The function VPK is called a trapdoor one-way function, since it is a one-way function to anyone who does not know the trapdoor.In this kind of scheme, the verifier receives the signed message SSK (M) but not the original message text. The verifier then applies the verification function VPK. This step both verifies the identity of the signer and, by (*), recovers the message text.Digital Signature with Appendix. In this kind of signature, the signer performs an operation on the message using his own secret key. The result is taken to be the signature of the message; it is sent along as an appendix to the message text. The verifier checks an equation involving the message, the appendix, and the signer's public key. If the equation checks, the verifier knows that the signer's secret key was used in generating the signature.We now give specific algorithms.

RSA Signatures. The most well-known signature with message recovery is the RSA signature. Let N be a hard-to-factor integer. The secret signature key s and the public verification key v are exponents with the property that

Msv = M (mod N)

for all messages M. Given v, it is easy to find s if one knows the factors of N but difficult otherwise. Thus the "vth power (mod N)" map is a trapdoor one-way function. The signature of M is

C := Ms (mod N);

to recover the message (and verify the signature), one computes

M := Cv (mod N).

Blind RSA Signatures. The above scheme is easily blinded. Suppose that Alice wants the Bank to produce a blind signature of the message M. She generates a random number r and sends

rv . M (mod N)

to the Bank to sign. The Bank does so, returning

r . Ms (mod N)

Alice then divides this result by r. The result is Ms (mod N), the Bank's signature of M, even though the Bank has never seen M.

The Schnorr Algorithms. The Schnorr family of algorithms includes an identification procedure and a signature with appendix. These algorithms are based on a zero-knowledge proof of possession of a secret key. Let p and q be large prime numbers with q dividing p - 1. Let g be a generator; that is, an integer between 1 and p such that

gq = 1 (mod p).

If s is an integer (mod q), then the modular exponentiation operation on s is

phi : s -> gs (mod p).

The inverse operation is called the discrete logarithm function and is denoted

loggt

East African trade bloc approves monetary union deal | Reuters

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Sun, 01 Dec 2013 06:25

Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:01pm IST

* Agreement to pave way for single currency in 10 years

* Deal intended to boost trade and attract foreign investors

* Region has oil, gas; plans new roads, railways, ports

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The leaders of five East African countries signed a protocol on Saturday laying the groundwork for a monetary union within 10 years that they expect will expand regional trade.

Heads of state of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, which have already signed a common market and a single customs union, say the protocol will allow them to progressively converge their currencies and increase commerce.

In the run-up to achieving a common currency, the East African Community (EAC) nations aim to harmonise monetary and fiscal policies and establish a common central bank. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda already present their budgets simultaneously every June.

The plan by the region of about 135 million people, a new frontier for oil and gas exploration, is also meant to draw foreign investment and wean EAC countries off external aid.

"The promise of economic development and prosperity hinges on our integration," said Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta.

"Businesses will find more freedom to trade and invest more widely, and foreign investors will find additional, irresistible reasons to pitch tent in our region," said Kenyatta, leader of the biggest economy in east Africa.

Kenyatta, who is due to face trial at the International Criminal Court on crimes against humanity charges in February, took over the chairmanship of the bloc from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, hosting the summit.

Kenya has launched a $13.8 billion Chinese-built railway that aims to cut transport costs, part of regional plans that also include building new ports and railways.

Landlocked Uganda and Kenya have discovered oil, while Tanzania has vast natural gas reserves, which require improved infrastructure and foreign investment so they can be exploited.

Tanzania, where the bloc's secretariat is based, has complained that it has been sidelined in discussions to plan these projects, but Kenyatta said the EAC was still united.

Kenneth Kitariko, chief executive officer at African Alliance Uganda, an investment advisory firm, said the monetary union would boost efficiency in the region's economy estimated at about $85 billion in combined gross domestic product.

"In a monetary union, the absence of currency risk provides a greater incentive to trade," he said.

Kitariko said, however, that achieving a successful monetary union would require convergence of the union's economies, hinting that some challenges lay ahead.

"Adjusting to a single monetary and exchange rate policy is an inescapable feature of monetary union ... but this will take time and may be painful for some," he said, referring to the fact that some countries may struggle to meet agreed benchmarks. (Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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East African countries agree to adopt common currency within 10 years | GlobalPost

'Cash, not second-hand clothes please,' Irish NGOs appeal to donors

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 19:34

An aid worker distributes relief goods at typhoon-hit Daan Bantayan, Cebu, central Philippines this week.

Image: distributes relief goods at typhoon-hit Daan Bantayan, Cebu, central Philippines

IRISH AID AGENCIES are appealing to the public to give money rather than second hand material goods to the Philippines relief effort, as the response to Typhoon Haiyan continues.

D"chas, the umbrella group for Ireland's NGOs, has thanked donors for their generosity, but said that where material items are donated that haven't specifically been requested, it may have the effect of preventing the transportation of goods that are needed.

According to Hans Zomer, Director of D"chas: ''People in Ireland have once again shown their generosity when there is a need to assist victims of disaster, hunger or conflict''.

''At the same time, our experience as Irish NGOs also shows that this high level of public support is not always matched by a high level of understanding of the needs of the communities affected by the disaster.

''If material items are donated that have not specifically been requested by an aid agency, it may actually prevent the transportation of essential items''

''In the Philippines, roads have been damaged or have been rendered un-passable and there is a real risk of them becoming jammed with shipments of non-priority items, such as second hand clothes,'' Zomer said.

Children queue for food at a damaged daycare centre in Basey township, Eastern Samar province [Bullit Marquez/AP/Press Association Images]

Donations of money enable relief organisations to buy exactly what victims need most urgently at locations closer to the affected areas. D"chas is asking members of the public to check out the website HowYouCanHelp.ie which sets out ways people can help best assist aid agencies.

UN appeal

The appeal comes as the UN seeks more international aid to shelter and give temporary jobs to the millions displaced by the storm.

Donors have so far given $164 million, or just under half of the initial UN humanitarian appeal for $301 million.

The earlier appeal was launched on 12 November, four days after Haiyan unleashed powerful 315kph winds and giant storm surges in the central Philippines.

At least 5,598 have been killed and 1,759 others are still missing, mainly in the predominantly poor islands of Samar and Leyte, according to a government tally.

Read: Rain puts 'fear in the eyes of children' in the PhilippinesConcern CEO: We need to look beyond short-term aid in PhilippinesAlready a fan? Connect below...

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European Unemployment Declines From All Time High, Youth Unemployment Hits Fresh Record - Full Breakdown

French MPs back fines for prostitutes' clients.

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 23:01

29 November 2013Last updated at 21:11 ET The French parliament has backed part of a bill that imposes a 1,500 euro (£1,250) fine on anyone paying for sex.

Prostitution is legal in France but pimping and soliciting in public are illegal.

Supporters of the bill say it would punish the customer and protect the prostitute but critics argue it would put sex workers at risk.

Protests for and against the bill took place outside the National Assembly in Paris as the debate took place.

MPs voted for the fine in a show of hands late on Friday night although the full text of the bill - which contains 20 articles - will be put to the vote on 4 December.

Under the new provision, repeat offenders risk a fine of 3,750 euros. Alternatively, they can attend a course to make them aware of the risks involved in the sale of sex.

Most of the bill's articles are aimed at disrupting foreign pimping networks or helping sex workers who want to stop.

One article aims to decriminalise France's estimated 40,000 prostitutes by scrapping a 2003 law that bans soliciting on the streets.

The law would instead target the clients.

'Forced to hide'The actress Catherine Deneuve is one of hundreds of celebrity figures urging the government to reconsider.

Tim Leicester of the medical charity Medecins du Monde said he feared that penalising those who paid for sex would actually harm prostitutes.

"That won't change anything for prostitutes. They will be forced to continue to hide themselves because even if they are not risking arrest, their clients are. And their survival depends on their clients," he told the Associated Press news agency.

Only about 30 members of the National Assembly were present when the debate began on Friday afternoon.

Maud Olivier, the Socialist MP who presented the bill, attacked the "hypocrisy" of critics in her opening speech.

Women's Rights Minister and government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem told MPs that France was "not a country that welcomes prostitution".

"The question is not sexuality, we are not there to be moral police... the question is about money that feeds pimping," she said.

Guy Geoffroy, head of the parliamentary commission created for the bill, also defended the proposition, saying it "advanced women's rights".

"We talk about the satisfaction of male desires but what are we doing about female desires?" he asked.

According to the French interior ministry, foreign prostitutes make up 80-90% of all sex workers in the country and most of those are the victims of trafficking rings.

IJsland scheldt tot 24.000 euro schulden per gezin kwijt

SCAM-United Nations News Centre - Public-private partners at UN pledge to seek funding for sustainable energy for all

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Sun, 01 Dec 2013 06:27

27 November 2013 '' The United Nations and the World Bank today announced a concerted effort by governments, international agencies, civil society and the private sector to scale up efforts to provide sustainable energy to all, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling for massive new investments in the face of a rising ''global thermostat.''

''Sustainable energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, social equity, a stable climate and a healthy environment,'' he told reporters after co-chairThe global thermostat is rising, threatening development goals and economies small and large. It is clear that we need a transformation in how we produce, use and share energy.ing with World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim a meeting of the Advisory Board of his Sustainable Energy For All initiative, in which he called for action in four areas: finance, energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Mr. Kim stressed that financing is key, with $600 billion to $800 billion a year needed from now until 2030 to reach the goals for access to energy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

''We are now starting in countries in which demand for action is most urgent,'' he said. ''In some of these countries, only one in 10 people has access to electricity. It is time for that to change.''

Launched two years ago, the initiative seeks to achieve three inter-linked goals by 2030: universal access to modern energy, doubling energy efficiency, and doubling the share of renewable energy, thus providing services such as lighting, clean cooking and mechanical power in developing countries, as well as improved energy efficiency, especially in the world's highest-energy consuming countries.

Mr. Ban praised achievements already attained such as Brazil's 'Light for All' programme that has reached 15 million people, Norway's commitment of 2 billion kroner ($330 million) in 2014 for global renewable energy and efficiency, and Bank of America's Green Bond that has raised $500 million for three years as part of its 10-year $50 billion environmental business commitment.

He also lauded OPEC's (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) announcement of a $1 billion fund for energy access.

''Now we need others to follow and build on these commitments. Achieving the goals of Sustainable Energy For All needs massive new and additional investment,'' he said, stressing the initiative's crucial roles in achieving overall sustainable development, reducing poverty and raising opportunity, combating climate change and ''laying the foundations for the future we want.''

''The global thermostat is rising, threatening development goals and economies small and large,'' he added. ''It is clear that we need a transformation in how we produce, use and share energy.''

Today's meeting was the Advisory Board's second, bringing together 42 representatives of business, finance, governments and civil society in a global public-private partnership.

It is co-chaired by Kandeh Yumkella, the Secretary-General's Special Representative and Chief Executive for Sustainable Energy for All, and Charles Holliday, Chairman of Bank of America. Other members include Peter L¶scher, chief executive of Siemens, Ibrahim Mayaki, the chief executive of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and Petter Nore from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

Mr. Yumkella pointed to widespread support not only for Sustainable Energy for All from numerous partners but also for energy to be at the heart of the global development agenda beyond 2015, the deadline for the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

''Eighty-one countries are now participating in this initiative,'' he said. ''Their action is complemented by that of private sector companies and associations, as well as civil society groups. We will continue to work with key stakeholders to achieve sustainable energy for all, to drive action that transforms lives.''

Renault Will Remotely Lock Down Electric Cars

If wind turbines are powered by electricity - Energy Market - derStandard.at> Economy

Geo-Engineering 'Could Upset Rainfall'

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Sun, 01 Dec 2013 14:18

Geo-Engineering 'Could Upset Rainfall'Posted on Dec 1, 2013By Tim Radford, Climate News Network

This piece first appeared at Climate New Network.

LONDON'--Geo-engineering '' the confident technocrat's last resort solution to catastrophic climate change '' could create damaging conditions of its own, according to new research.

Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in the US and an international team of colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters: Atmospheres that at least one deliberate technological strategy to limit global warming could reduce seasonal rainfall, including the monsoons of Asia that provide a lifeline to hundreds of millions.

Senior scientists have in the last decade tentatively considered technological responses to climate change on the basis that economies, politicians and consumers show no sign of making the dramatic reductions in fossil fuel use that would cut the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel global warming.

Among these responses is a relatively simple one. If greenhouse gases go on increasing, then more solar heat will be trapped in the atmosphere. So, the world should think of a way to reduce solar radiation instead: spray sulphate particles into the stratosphere to block incoming sunlight, or even place arrays of mirrors into orbit to reflect a proportion of the sunlight away from the Earth.

So the scientists used 12 different climate models to simulate various possible futures, including one based on historical factors in which carbon dioxide did not just double, but reached four times the levels in the atmosphere during the American Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars that ravaged Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.They found '' not surprisingly '' that a greenhouse world would be matched by a significant increase in rainfall in many places, along with prolonged droughts in others. That would happen because more warmth means more evaporation, greater saturation of the atmosphere and consequently more precipitation.

Harvests at risk

And then, still using the same climate models, they tested what would happen to rainfall if they artificially blocked some of the incoming sunlight, to lower the overall global temperatures. But they could not recreate the world as it had been before the alarming increase in carbon dioxide levels to the predictable climates on which agriculture and industry and different urban civilisations have come to depend.

The models predicted that instead of increasing with potentially disastrous outcomes, seasonal rains would diminish, with equally damaging consequences. A reduction in normal sunlight would mean less evaporation. Plants would on balance respond to increased carbon dioxide levels by closing their stomata, or pores, thus transpiring less water.

Monsoon rains in East Asia would fall by 6%, in South Africa by 5%, in North America by 7%, and in South America by 6%. These differences don't sound huge '' but many millions could starve as a result of the changes.

''Geo-engineering the planet doesn't cure the problem. Even if one of these techniques could keep global temperatures approximately balanced, precipitation would not return to normal conditions,'' said Dr Tilmes. ''What we do know is that our climate is very complex, that human activity is making the planet warmer and that any technological fix we might try to shade the planet could have unforeseen consequences.''

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Private firms selling mass surveillance systems around world, documents show

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 15:17

Private firms are selling spying tools and mass surveillance technologies to developing countries with promises that "off the shelf" equipment will allow them to snoop on millions of emails, text messages and phone calls, according to a cache of documents published on Monday.

The papers show how firms, including dozens from Britain, tout the capabilities at private trade fairs aimed at offering nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East the kind of powerful capabilities that are usually associated with government agencies such as GCHQ and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency.

The market has raised concerns among human rights groups and ministers, who are poised to announce new rules about the sale of such equipment from Britain.

"The government agrees that further regulation is necessary," a spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said. "These products have legitimate uses '... but we recognise that they may also be used to conduct espionage."

The documents are included in an online database compiled by the research watchdog Privacy International, which has spent four years gathering 1,203 brochures and sales pitches used at conventions in Dubai, Prague, Brasilia, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, Paris and London. Analysts posed as potential buyers to gain access to the private fairs.

The database, called the Surveillance Industry Index, shows how firms from the UK, Israel, Germany, France and the US offer governments a range of systems that allow them to secretly hack into internet cables carrying email and phone traffic.

The index has details from 338 companies, including 77 from the UK, offering a total of 97 different technologies.

One firm says its "massive passive monitoring" equipment can "capture up to 1bn intercepts a day". Some offer cameras hidden in cola cans, bricks or children's carseats, while one manufacturer turns cars or vans into surveillance control centres.

There is nothing illegal about selling such equipment, and the companies say the new technologies are there to help governments defeat terrorism and crime.

But human rights and privacy campaigners are alarmed at the sophistication of the systems, and worry that unscrupulous regimes could use them as tools to spy on dissidents and critics.

Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi is known to have used off-the-shelf surveillance equipment to clamp down on opposition leaders.

Privacy International believes UK firms should now be subject to the same strict export licence rules faced by arms manufacturers.

"There is a culture of impunity permeating across the private surveillance market, given that there are no strict export controls on the sale of this technology, as there are on the sale of conventional weapons," said Matthew Rice, research consultant with Privacy International.

"This market profits off the suffering of people around the world, yet it lacks any sort of effective oversight or accountability.

"This lack of regulation has allowed companies to export surveillance technology to countries that use their newly acquired surveillance capability to spy on human rights activists, journalists and political movements."

Privacy International hopes the Surveillance Industry Index will give academics, politicians and campaigners a chance to look at the type of surveillance technologies now available in the hope of sparking a debate about improved regulation.

The documents include a brochure from a company called Advanced Middle East Systems (AMES), based in Dubai. It has been offering a device called Cerebro '' a DIY system similar to the Tempora programme run by GCHQ '' that taps information from fibre-optic cables carrying internet traffic.

AMES describes Cerebro as a "core technology designed to monitor and analyse in real time communications '... including SMS (texting), GSM (mobile calls), billing data, emails, conversations, webmail, chat sessions and social networks."

The company brochure makes clear this is done by attaching probes to internet cables. "No co-operation with the providers is required," it adds.

"Cerebro is designed to store several billions of records '' metadata and/or communication contents. At any time the investigators can follow the live activity of their target with advanced targeting criteria (email addresses, phone numbers, key words)," says the brochure.

AMES refused to comment after being contacted by the Guardian, but said it followed similar protocols to other surveillance companies. "We don't want to interact with the press," said a spokesman.

Another firm selling similar equipment is VASTech, based in South Africa, which has a system called Zebra. Potential buyers are told it has been designed to help "government security agencies face huge challenges in their combat against crime and terrorism".

VASTech says Zebra offers "access to high volumes of information generated via telecommunication services for the purposes of analysis and investigation".

It has been designed to "intercept all content and metadata of voice, SMS, email and fax communications on the connected network, creating a rich repository of information".

A spokesman for the company said: "VASTech produces products for governmental law enforcement agencies. These products have the primary goal of reducing specifically cross-border crimes such as child pornography, human trafficking, drug smuggling, weapon smuggling, money laundering, corruption and terrorist activities. We compete internationally and openly against several suppliers of similar systems.

"We only supply legal governments, which are not subjected to international sanctions. Should their status change in this regard, we hold the right to withdraw our supplies and support unilaterally."

Ann McKechin, a Labour member of the arms export control committee, said: "Obviously we are concerned about how our government provides licences, given these new types of technology.

"Software technology is now becoming a very large component of our total exports and how we police it before it gets out of country will become an increasingly difficult question and I think the government has to review its processes to consider whether they are fit for the task."

She said the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which has responsibility for granting export licences, had to ensure it has the skills and knowledge to assess new technologies, particularly if they were being sold to "countries of concern".

"The knowledge of staff which maybe more geared to more traditional types of weaponry," she added.

A business department spokesperson said: "The government agrees that further regulation is necessary. These products have legitimate uses in defending networks and tracking and disrupting criminals, but we recognise that they may also be used to conduct espionage.

"Given the international nature of this problem we believe that an internationally agreed solution will be the most effective response. That is why the UK is leading international efforts to agree export controls on specific technologies of concern.

"We expect to be able to announce real progress in this area in early December."

Some companies offer a range of spy equipment that would not look out of place in a James Bond film

Spy vans

Ordinary vans, cars and motorbikes can be customised to offer everything a spy could need. Tiny cameras and microphones are hidden in wing mirrors, headlights and even the makers' logo. Vehicles can also be fitted with the latest mass surveillance technology, allowing them to intercept, assess and store a range of digital communications from the surrounding area.

Hidden cameras

The range of objects that can hide high-quality cameras and recording equipment appears almost limitless; from a box of tissues giving a 360-degree view of the room, to a child's car seat, a brick and a key fob. Remote controls allow cameras to follow targets as they move around a room and have a powerful zoom to give high definition close-ups.

Recorders

As with cameras recording equipment is getting more sophisticated and more ubiquitous. From cigarette lighters to pens their are limitless ways to listen in on other people's conversations. One firm offers a special strap microphone that straps to the wearer's would be spies' back and records conversations going on directly behind them. According to the brochure: "[This] is ideal because people in a crowd think that someone with their back turned can't hear their conversation.. Operatives can work much closer to their target."

Handheld 'biometric cameras'

This system, made by a UK firm, is currently being used by British forces in Afghanistan to help troops identify potential terrorists. The brochure for the Mobile Biometric Platform says: "Innocent civilian or Insurgent? Not Certain? Our systems are." It adds: "The MBP is tailored for military use and enables biometric enrolment and identification of finger, face and iris against on board watchlists in real time from live or forensic data."

Mobile phone locators

It is now possible, from a single laptop computer, to locate where a mobile phone is calling from anywhere in the world, with an accuracy of between 200 metres and a mile. This is not done by attaching probes, and it is not limited to the area where the laptop is working from. The "cross border" system means it is now theoretically possible to locate a mobile phone call from a town abroad from a laptop in London.

UT Documents: Wall Street Journal's Alistair MacDonald "reports" an outright lie

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 22:53

(updated below - Sat.)The Wall Street Journal's Toronto-based reporter, Alistair MacDonald, last night published what can only be described as an outright lie. Here's what he claimed:And this:Not only is it patently false to say that the CBC paid me for "access to Snowden's documents" - more on that in a minute - but MacDonald must know that his claim about what CBC "admits" is also patently false. Here's what the CBC's Director of News Content, David Walmsley, actually wrote about our relationship:For those of you wondering, CBC News is currently in a freelance relationship with Glenn Greenwald. As both a journalist and a commentator, Greenwald has written for many prestigious media outlets in recent years, ranging from The Guardian to the New York Times to Salon.com.

He will write and report for CBC News and will help provide context and analysis on the documents from the NSA. Greenwald knows these files well. He has spent months exploring the global role of the NSA working with material taken by a former National Security Agency employee, Edward Snowden.

As with all CBC News content, stories generated by CBC reporters and Mr. Greenwald that are connected to these documents will be held to CBC journalistic standards.

Indeed, that is exactly what the contract provides and is exactly what I'm doing for CBC: writing news stories for them as a freelance journalist, alongside CBC staff journalists and editors. What is particularly laughable is MacDonald's self-praising boast that he was the one who uncovered this relationship: in fact, the very first (and so far only) article we published at the CBC on this story featured my byline right at the very top of the article:So the breaking discovery from this intrepid, fearless Wall Street Journal investigative reporter is that the freelance journalists who reported on a big story for a large media outlet with a byline were paid for their work. Is that ever not the case?Does MacDonald write his articles for free for the Wall Street Journal, or is he paid for his work? How much is he paid? Why has he not disclosed this? What is he hiding? Let the journalists who write articles for big media outlets without being paid for their work step up and be the first to support this attack.MacDonald's claim that CBC paid for "access to Snowden's documents" is equally false. The CBC does not have "access to Snowden's documents". They only have access to the specific, carefully selected documents that we are reporting on together. What they're paying for - under a standard joint freelance contract with both me and my freelance colleague Ryan Gallagher - is the work that freelance reporters always do: selecting and analyzing the material to be reported and then participating in the drafting and finalizing of the article and reporting (for both TV and print): extensive work we all did together.Aside from being completely standard, having a genuine freelance contract with media outlets is the only way to report on these documents. If we did not have such a contract, then the US government and its apologists (the very same people now criticizing us for having these contracts), would claim (dubiously but aggressively) that we were acting as a "source" or a distributor of documents, rather than as journalists in reporting them, and thus should lose the legal protections accorded to the process of journalism. As a result, we ensure that we negotiate a standard freelance contract so that nobody other than charlatans (such as those employed by the Wall Street Journal) could contest their authenticity and normalcy (for the extensive work we did in reporting and writing this story - one that broke news all over Canada and then the world - Ryan Gallagher and I were paid a joint freelance fee of $1,500).This is, yet again, nothing more than the standard tactic of distraction we see over and over. Just as was true of the Manning war crimes disclosures: there is a small cottage industry of pundits, bloggers, and journalists who evince zero interest in the substance of the revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying which we're reporting on around the world. The people I'm referencing literally almost never mention any of the actual revelations, but are instead obsessed with spending their time personally attacking the journalists, whistleblowers, and other messengers who enable the world to know about what is being done.Everyone having any sort of public impact merits critical scrutiny, and that certainly includes me. But when that scrutiny comes in the form of blatantly absurd and false attacks like the one from the Wall Street Journal - and from people who devote no time or attention to the substance of the revelations - then it seems clear that the attacks are little more than means of doing the NSA's dirty work for it: trying to discredit the journalists reporting on the story to ensure attention is shifted away from the spying revelations.As I said from the start, I'll answer these kinds of attacks now and then but it won't succeed in distracting attention from what matters. In the last six weeks alone, we've reported on NSA and GCHQ documents in Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Holland, the U.S., the UK, and now Canada. More stories are coming in these and other countries in the next two weeks. Nothing is going to stop or even impede our reporting the newsworthy stories around the world that show what is being done to internet freedom and individual privacy by the world's most powerful factions operating in the dark and with no real accountability.UPDATE (Sat.): On Twitter yesterday, MacDonald acknowledged that his accusations were fundamentally false, but tried to pass it off as merely a "clarification" of his defamatory claims:Those, evidently, are the ethics of The Wall Street Journal: if you publish radically inaccurate but incendiary accusations that are then proven totally false, don't retract them or apologize for them: just pretend you're "clarifying".Moreover, after devoting numerous tweets to publicly demanding that I disclose my compensation arrangement for the story I worked on with CBC, MacDonald acknowledged that I fully answered his questions, but repeatedly refused to disclose his own compensation. He first tried to justify that double standard this way:Apparently, MacDonald, though claiming to be a journalist, does not campaign for transparency. Isn't that rather elemental to the job? He then justified his refusal to adhere to his own disclosure demands this way:The idea that journalists should be forced to disclose their compensation arrangements is moronic, but if you're going to impose that demand on others, you don't get to exempt yourself. So add that to the journalistic ethics of the Wall Street Journal: disclosure of compensation is for other journalists, but not for themselves.

'Humans evolved after a female chimpanzee mated with a pig': Extraordinary claim made by American geneticist.

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Source: bertb news feed

Sun, 01 Dec 2013 14:27

Dr Eugene McCarthy points to features that distinguish us from primatesHe says that the only animals which also have these features are pigsControversial hypothesis has been met by significant oppositionBy Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 04:45 EST, 30 November 2013 | UPDATED: 05:49 EST, 30 November 2013

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The human species began as the hybrid offspring of a male pig and a female chimpanzee, a leading geneticist has suggested.

The startling claim has been made by Eugene McCarthy, of the University of Georgia, who is also one of the worlds leading authorities on hybridisation in animals.

He points out that while humans have many features in common with chimps, we also have a large number of distinguishing characteristics not found in any other primates.

The origin of the species? A remarkable new theory advanced by a leading geneticist suggests that human beings may have originally emerged as the hybrid offspring of a male pig and a female chimpanzee

Dr McCarthy says these divergent characteristics are most likely the result of a hybrid origin at some point far back in human evolutionary history.

What's more, he suggests, there is one animal that has all of the traits which distinguish humans from our primate cousins in the animal kingdom.

'What is this other animal that has all these traits?' he asks rhetorically. 'The answer is Sus scrofa, the ordinary pig.'

Dr McCarthy elaborates his astonishing hypothesis in an article on Macroevolution.net, a website he curates. He is at pains to point out that that it is merely a hypothesis, but he presents compelling evidence to support it.

Scientists currently suppose that chimpanzees are humans' closest living evolutionary relatives, a theory amply backed by genetic evidence.

However, as Dr McCarthy points out, despite this genetic similarity, there are a massive number of divergent anatomical characteristics distinguishing the two species.

These distinguishing characteristics, including hairless skin, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, light-coloured eyes, protruding noses and heavy eyelashes, to name but a few, are unmistakeably porcine, he suggests.

There are also a number of less obvious but equally inexplicable similarities between humans and pigs in the structure of the skin and organs.

Indeed, pig skin tissues and heart valves can be used in medicine because of their similarity and compatibility with the human body.

Similarities: Dr Eugene McCarthy suggests that humans' hairless skin and subcutaneous fat could be explained by porcine ancestry

Dr McCarthy says that the original pig-chimp hook up was probably followed by several generations of 'backcrossing', where the offspring of that pairing lived among chimps and mated with them - becoming more like chimps and less like pigs with every new generation.

This also helps to explain the problem of relative infertility in hybrids. Dr McCarthy points out that the belief that all hybrids are sterile is in fact false, and in many cases hybrid animals are able to breed with mates of the same species of either parent.

After several generations the hybrid strain would have become fertile enough to breed amongst themselves, Dr McCarthy says.

Unsurprisingly, Dr McCarthy's hypothesis has come in for substantial criticism from orthodox evolutionary biologists and their Creationist opponents alike.

One important criticism, which dubs his theory the 'Monkey-F******-A-Pig hypothesis', is that there is little chance that pigs and chimps could be interfertile. The two orders of creatures, according to evolutionary theory, diverged roughly 80million years ago, a ScienceBlogs post points out.

'[J]ust the gradual accumulation of molecular differences in sperm and egg recognition proteins would mean that pig sperm wouldn't recognize a chimpanzee egg as a reasonable target for fusion,' PZ Myers writes.

Furthermore, the blogger explains, while chimps have 48 chromosomes, pigs have just 38.

He adds: 'Hybridizing a pig and a chimp is like taking half the dancers from a performance of Swan Lake and the other half from a performance of Giselle and throwing them together on stage to assemble something. It's going to be a catastrophe.'

Finally, he suggests rather impudently that Dr McCarthy do the experimental work himself and try mating with a pig to see how far he gets.

But Dr McCarthy believes that, in the case of humans and other creatures, his hybrid modification to evolutionary theory can account for a range of phenomena that Darwinian evolution alone has difficulty explaining.

Despite the opinions of some peer reviewers that Dr McCarthy's work presents a potentially paradigm-shifting new take on conventional views of the origins of new life forms, he has had difficulty finding a publisher, so he has chosen to publish a book-length manuscript outlining his ideas on his website.

In its conclusion he writes: 'I must admit that I initially felt a certain amount of repugnance at the idea of being a hybrid. The image of a pig mating with an ape is not a pretty one, nor is that of a horde of monstrous half-humans breeding in a hybrid swarm.

'But the way we came to be is not so important as the fact that we now exist. As every Machiavellian knows, good things can emerge from ugly processes, and I think the human race is a very good thing. Moreover, there is something to be said for the idea of having the pig as a relative.

'My opinion of this animal has much improved during the course of my research. Where once I thought of filth and greed, I now think of intelligence, affection, loyalty, and adaptability, with an added touch of joyous sensuality '-- qualities without which humans would not be human.'

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Here's what health entrepreneurs can learn from 23andMe | VentureBeat | Health | by christinafarr

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 07:15

Dec. 4 - 5, 2013Redwood City, CA

Tickets on Sale NowThis is a guest post by medical technology entrepreneur Chase Curtiss

Healthcare is undergoing an unprecedented shift in technology adoption.

Innovation that has made digital health one of the hottest tech trends. The market is expected to grow from $20 billion to over $50 billion by 2018 and investments in digital health have also dramatically increased over the last 24 months. Everyone is building products in the digital health space, from activity trackers to mobile diagnostics, with very little understanding of the industry and the roles of important gatekeepers. The obvious gatekeeper in digital health is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who has been front and center in the growing conflict over the role of regulation in digital health.

The FDA recently took on one of the darlings of the digital health industry, Google-backed 23andMe. The FDA warning letter very clearly spelled out the frustration with the claims 23andMe had made in marketing their product and the complement lack of ''any evidence that it has tested the accuracy of (the product).''

Related: Read our in-depth analysis about the dispute between 23andMe and the FDA here.

The outrage over the FDA's treatment of 23andMe is the wrong response.

We should be holding 23andMe accountable for the claims they make in marketing their product. Even a product with such great potential should have to support its claims with valid evidence.

23andMe is not an isolated instance. Companies marketing products without the proper clearance are happening all over the digital landscape from prestigious institutions like the Cleveland Clinic with concussion assessment mobile products that have dodged regulation to get to market for a quick profit to small development outfits wanting to cash in on blossoming field.

What is often forgotten in the bashing of the FDA, is the vital role the organization plays in ensuring the safety and efficacy of medical products to consumers as well as to healthcare professionals. The FDA doesn't hold extremist views, isn't difficult to work with and has shown through guideline publications and sympathetic warning letters to be extremely flexible in working with companies to adhere to the appropriate standards.

A recent exchange with Congress over the Software Act, an attempt to remove the FDA from the digital health industry, showcased a level headed and reasonable approach from Dr Jeffrey Shuren of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health:

Simply because (medical devices) got smaller and I can pick it up and walk out of the room with it, doesn't change the risk to the patients. Why for that reason alone would we treat it differently?''

The statement exemplifies the misconception about the FDA's role in regulation. It isn't to stifle innovation, it is to ensure the proper marketing of safe and effective products no matter the platform for distribution. This distinction is critical when you evaluate the future drivers of digital health, which will be centered on the prescription of digital health solutions through the medical provider and not simply purchased by the consumer. The motivation and oversight of your medical care team will be the single greatest driver to adoption and adherence necessary for the heralded ''disruption of healthcare''.

The problem with the current approach to skirt around the FDA whenever possible is the challenge it presents to medical professionals in their decision to adopt technology. Without the regulatory clearance of a product, very few healthcare systems will allow the use of a digital health solution. Smaller healthcare providers on the other hand have started dabbling in tech driven solutions without assurances of a quality system or any credible validation.

Those driving the attempt to deregulate digital health to improve time to market and spur innovation are actually causing more harm than good to future healthcare system we all want. Instead of supporting the FDA and pushing Congress to support a streamlined review process, the tech industry's approach to digital health has been to discredit, ignore, and vilify the gatekeeper, instead of identify, understand and embrace.

The direct disregard of the necessary regulatory oversight needed to market medical products will lead to an increase in malpractice lawsuits from the use of unregulated mobile technologies in patient management and tracking, which will set back the much-desired innovation in healthcare technology 5 to 10 years.

By simply embracing the FDA, and meeting the completely realistic standards, digital health companies can help spark widespread adoption of digital solutions in the large healthcare systems. This embrace of regulation could be the key to acceptance by a wider range of providers which would improve healthcare data collection and patient management between visits to allow for more objective outcomes tracking.

A simplistic view of the decision process on whether to seek FDA clearance:

''Leaders who wrestle with what's best vs. simply what's financially feasible/profitable.'''' John Schumann, MD @glasshospital

All too often our mindset shifts towards that latter and instead of better understanding the barriers, we choose to dance around them in the hope of short-term gain.

Chase Curtiss is a healthcare entrepreneur and clinical exercise physiologist with internationally published research in biomechanics and human performance. Chase currently serves as the CEO and Founder of Sway Medical, a mobile health startup with an FDA-cleared platform changing the way healthcare professionals monitor conditions that alter balance. Follow him on Twitter @SwayMedical

VentureBeat is creating an index of the top online health services for consumers. Take a look at our initial suggestions and complete the survey to help us build a definitive index. We'll publish the official index in the weeks to come, and for those who fill out they survey, we'll send you an expanded report free of charge. Speak with the analyst who put this survey together to get more in-depth information, inquire within.

Canadian denied entry to the US after agent cities private medical records

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Source: RT - USA

Sat, 30 Nov 2013 03:54

Published time: November 29, 2013 18:27Edited time: November 29, 2013 20:18Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

A wheelchair-bound Canadian woman was denied entry to the United States this week because she was previously diagnosed with clinical depression. Now she wants to know why the US Department of Homeland Security had her medical history on file.

The Toronto Star's Valerie Haunch reported on Thursday that 50-year-old author Ellen Richardson was turned away from the city's Pearson Airport three days earlier after DHS officials said she lacked the necessary medical clearance to cross into the US.

''I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,'' Richardson told the Star.

The woman, who has been paraplegic since an unsuccessful suicide attempt in 2001, was planning to fly to New York City to start a 10-day Caribbean cruisein collaboration with a March of Dimes group, and had already invested around $6,000 into the trip, she told the paper.

''I was so aghast. I was saying, 'I don't understand this. What is the problem?' I was so looking forward to getting away . . . I'd even brought a little string of Christmas lights I was going to string up in the cabin. . . . It's not like I can just book again right away," she said.

But according to what American officials told her, it would take the permission of US government-approved doctor and around $500 in fees in order to enter the country. Richardson soon left the airport defeated, but only afterward did she begin to raise questions about what the DHS knew about her.

"It really hit me later '-- that it's quite stunning they have that information,'' she told CBC.

Richardson said she has been on numerous cruises since 2001, and traveled through the US for all of them. Only this week, however, did the DHS cite the June 2012 hospital stay, spawning questions about how much personal information American officials hold on foreign persons.

According to Richardson, the border agent told her that the US Immigration and Nationality Act allows the government to deny entry to anyone with a physical or mental disorder that may pose a ''threat to the property, safety or welfare,'' and that her ''mental illness episode'' from last year warranted extra attention.

''The incident in 2012 was hospitalization for depression. Police were not involved,'' her attorney, David McGhee, told the Star, adding that he approached Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews as well ''to tell me if she's aware of any provincial or federal authority to allow US authorities to have access to our medical records.''

''Medical records are supposed to be strictly confidential,'' McGhee said.

"We don't know how deep the connection is between US customs" and Canadian authorities, Richardson's member of Parliament, Mike Sullivan, told CBC. With her story quickly going viral, however, others hope to soon find out the full scope of the data being managed by the DHS.

''This is scary,'' MPP France Gelinas told the Star for a follow-up published Friday morning. ''They got access to information that should never have been accessible to anyone.''

''Canadians must be assured that their personal records are kept confidential, as intended,'' Sullivan added to Hauch's latest report.

As RT reported previously, employees of the DHS' Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, have access to huge databases, both federally and privately run, which contain information on travelers including tax ID numbers, past itineraries and even physical characteristics. As for hospital visits in other countries, however, Richardson and others generally expect that information to be not on file.

According to Star reporter Jack Lakey, an Ontario health ministry official said Thursday that US authorities ''do not have access to medical or other health records for Ontarians travelling to the US.''

''If the province didn't knowingly hand over the information, it only leaves the federal government as the source, possibly in some kind of information sharing agreement with the US that we aren't supposed to know about,'' Lakey speculated. ''Given its recently revealed complicity in allowing the U.S. to spy on G8 and G20 leaders when they gathered here in 2010, it is no stretch to believe Ottawa is also playing ball with them on this.''

Common Core | Compensation Mathematics | Obamacare

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Sun, 01 Dec 2013 13:53

Guess wrong, figure it out later.

Compensation means how much you get paid, right? Or payment for a loss? Or any of the other common usages, right?

Reader Bronwyn was not happy when she learned that in Common Core mathematics, compensation means encouraging students to guess the wrong but easier answer, then teaching them how to compensate for the wrong answer to get to the right result:

My 4th grade daughter attends a Christian school here in Orange Co., Ca.

I do not like their choice in a common core math book at all, but I have been particularly amused by the use of the term ''compensation.''

The teachers actually had to send home an email because none of the parents had any idea what the term meant. I attached a copy of the definition in the book because it just seems so fitting during this Obama Administration.

''compensation: you choose numbers close to the numbers in the problem to make the computation easier and then adjust the answer for the numbers chosen.''

All this under the lesson- Using mental math to multiply. This must be Obama's math!

Here we parents thought it was how we got paid?

Here's the question posed to the students to which the featured image was the answer:

In related news, HealthCare.gov will meet deadline for fixes, White House officials say:

Administration officials are preparing to announce Sunday that they have met their Saturday deadline for improving HealthCare.gov, according to government officials, in part by expanding the site's capacity so that it can handle 50,000 users at once. But they have yet to meet all their internal goals for repairing the federal health-care site, and it will not become clear how many consumers it can accommodate until more people try to use it'....

Nov. 30 was not originally intended to be a key date for the online enrollment system, but it took on outsize political and public importance when administration officials announced five weeks ago that the ''vast majority of users'' would be able to sign up for insurance through the site by that day. A combination of federal employees, outside contractors and a handful of technical and management experts have worked at breakneck speed for five weeks to improve the Web site's performance as the White House has come under withering criticism from its political opponents and some consumers.

Update:H/t to commenter genes for this video '-- what possibly could go wrong with ''compensation'' mathematics?

Rename "master/slave" terminology to "client/server" [#343414] | Drupal.org

For 20 Years the Nuclear Launch Code at US Minuteman Silos Was 00000000

Coming Soon, a Night Watchman With Wheels? - NYTimes.com

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 19:00

The night watchman of the future is 5 feet tall, weighs 300 pounds and looks a lot like R2-D2 '' without the whimsy. And will work for $6.25 an hour.

A company in California has developed a mobile robot, known as the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, as a safety and security tool for corporations, as well as for schools and neighborhoods.

''We founded Knightscope after what happened at Sandy Hook,'' said William Santana Li, a co-founder of that technology company, now based in Sunnyvale, Calif. ''You are never going to have an armed officer in every school.''

But what is for some a technology-laden route to safer communities and schools is to others an entry point to a post-Orwellian, post-privacy world.

''This is like R2-D2's evil twin,'' said Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, a privacy rights group based in Washington.

And the addition of such a machine to the labor market could force David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, to rethink his theory about how technology wrecks the middle class.

The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25, and $8 in California. Coming in substantially under those costs, Knightscope's robot watchman service raises questions about whether artificial intelligence and robotics technologies are beginning to assault both the top and the bottom of the work force as well.

The K5 is the work of Mr. Li, a former Ford Motor Company executive, and Stacy Dean Stephens, a former police officer in Texas. They gained some attention in June for their failed attempt to manufacture a high-tech police cruiser at Carbon Motors Corporation in Indiana.

Knightscope plans to trot out K5 at a news event on Thursday '-- a debut that is certain to touch off a new round of debate, not just about the impact of automation, but also about how a new generation of mobile robots affects privacy.

The co-founders have chosen to position their robot not as a job killer, but as a system that will upgrade the role of security guard, even if fewer humans are employed.

''We want to give the humans the ability to do the strategic work,'' said Mr. Li in a recent telephone interview, describing a highly skilled analyst who might control a herd of security robots.

The robot, which can be seen in a promotional video, is still very much a work in progress. The system will have a video camera, thermal imaging sensors, a laser range finder, radar, air quality sensors and a microphone. It will also have a limited amount of autonomy, such as the ability to follow a preplanned route. It will not, at least for now, include advanced features like facial recognition, which is still being perfected.

Knightscope settled in Silicon Valley because it was hoping for a warm reception from technology companies that employ large security forces to protect their sprawling campuses.

Over all, there are about 1.3 million private security guards in the United States, and they are low paid for the most part, averaging about $23,000 a year, according to the Service Employees International Union. Most are not unionized, so they are vulnerable to low-cost automation alternatives.

K5 also raises questions about mass surveillance, which has already set off intense debate in the United States and Europe with the expansion of closed-circuit television systems on city streets and elsewhere. The Knightscope founders, however, have a radically different notion, which involves crime prediction, or ''precog'' '-- a theme of the movie ''Minority Report.''

''We have a different perspective,'' Mr. Li said. ''We don't want to think about 'RoboCop' or 'Terminator,' we prefer to think of a mash up 'Batman,' 'Minority Report' and R2-D2.''

Mr. Li envisions a world of K5 security bots patrolling schools and communities, in what would amount to a 21st-century version of a neighborhood watch. The all-seeing mobile robots will eventually be wirelessly connected to a centralized data server, where they will have access to ''big data,'' making it possible to recognize faces, license plates and other suspicious anomalies.

Mr. Rotenberg said such abilities would rapidly encroach on traditional privacy rights.

''There is a big difference between having a device like this one on your private property and in a public space,'' he said. ''Once you enter public space and collect images and sound recordings, you have entered another realm. This is the kind of pervasive surveillance that has put people on edge.''

Mr. Li said he believed he could circumvent those objections by making the data produced by his robots available to anyone in a community with access to the Internet.

''As much as people worry about Big Brother, this is as much about putting the technology in the hands of the public to look back,'' he said. ''Society and industry can work together on this issue.''

This is essentially a reprise of the debate over Google's Street View system, which has drawn opposition from privacy advocates. But while Google's cars captured still images infrequently, a pervasive video and audio portal that autonomously patrolled a neighborhood would in effect be a real-time Street View system.

For the moment, the system is unarmed, and it is certain to become the target of teenagers who will undoubtedly get a thrill from knocking the robot over. Mr. Li said he believed this was not an insurmountable challenge, given the weight, size and video-recording ability of the bots.

Mr. Rotenberg said a greater challenge would be community opposition. He acknowledged, however, that K5's looks were benign enough. ''It doesn't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger,'' he said. ''Unless he was rolled over and pressed into a ball.''

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Afghan president condemns US strike that killed toddler, threatens not to sign security deal

Statement by the Press Secretary on the Presidential Determination Pursuant to Section 1245(d)(4)(B) and (C) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Eye on 2016, Clintons Rebuild Bond With Blacks - NYTimes.com

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Sun, 01 Dec 2013 03:28

Inside Bright Hope Baptist Church, the luminaries of Philadelphia's black political world gathered for the funeral of former Representative William H. Gray III in July. Dozens of politicians '-- city, state and federal '-- packed the pews as former President Bill Clinton offered a stirring eulogy, quoting Scripture and proudly telling the crowd that he was once described as ''the only white man in America who knew all the verses to 'Lift Every Voice and Sing.' ''

But it was the presence and behavior of Hillary Rodham Clinton that most intrigued former Gov. Edward G. Rendell: During a quiet moment, Mrs. Clinton leaned over to the governor and pressed him for details about the backgrounds, and the influence, of the assembled black leaders.

Since Mrs. Clinton left the secretary of state post in February, she and her husband have sought to soothe and strengthen their relationship with African-Americans, the constituency that was most scarred during her first bid for the presidency. Five years after remarks by Mr. Clinton about Barack Obama deeply strained the Clintons' bond with African-Americans, the former first family is setting out to ensure that there is no replay of such trouble in 2016.

Mrs. Clinton used two of her most high-profile speeches, including one before a black sorority convention, to address minority voting rights '-- an explosive issue among African-Americans since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in June. A month after Mr. Gray's funeral, Mrs. Clinton and her husband both asked to speak at the service for Bill Lynch, a black political strategist who is credited with the election of David N. Dinkins as mayor of New York, and stayed for well over two hours in a crowd full of well-connected mourners. And there have been constant personal gestures, especially by the former president.

Hillary Rodham Clinton at a Sunday church service in Columbia, S.C., during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

''I think that this is an effort to repair whatever damage they felt may have been done in '08,'' said the Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton ''know that there are some who have lingering questions, if not antipathy, towards them,'' Mr. Sharpton said.

This task has taken on new urgency given the Democratic Party's push to the left, away from the centrist politics with which the Clintons are identified. Strong support from black voters could serve as a bulwark for Mrs. Clinton against a liberal primary challenge should she decide to run for president in 2016. It would be difficult for a progressive candidate, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to rise if the former first lady takes back the black voters she lost to Mr. Obama and retains the blue-collar white voters who flocked to her.

Her appearance before the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta in July, which she opened by offering condolences to the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was killed in Florida last year, and her voting rights address to the American Bar Association in August drew significant attention among black leaders.

''That speech that she gave regarding voting suppression was very, very significant and meaningful,'' said Representative James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress. Mr. Clyburn, who clashed sharply with Mr. Clinton in 2008, said Mrs. Clinton was ''now in a very good place with the African-American community.''

Tavis Smiley, a black commentator, argued that this was because ''they have now learned the important lesson that there's a distinction between a coronation and an election.''

The Clintons appear to be taking nothing for granted. Mr. Clinton did not just attend the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington on the National Mall in August, but also showed up at Arlington Cemetery in June to honor Medgar Evers on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. In May, Mr. Clinton was the commencement speaker at Howard University in Washington, posing for pictures with all who asked and sitting on stage next to one of the school's best-known graduates, L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor from Virginia, a longtime friend and rival of Mr. Clinton's.

In private, Mr. Clinton is frequently in touch with black leaders. Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and the ranking member on the House panel on government oversight, got a handwritten note from the former president over the summer commending him on his leadership on the committee.

''He has made an effort to reach out over and over again through the years,'' Mr. Cummings said.

The congressman recalled Mr. Clinton's visits to his church in Baltimore and a phone call he got from the former president inquiring about the health of his mother, whose name Mr. Clinton recalled.

Such personal touches, for which the Clintons are famous, have never been more important as Mrs. Clinton considers a second presidential bid.

Mr. Clinton has a rich, if occasionally fraught, history with African-Americans. He was a New South governor and a progressive on race who would eventually be called ''the first black president'' by the author Toni Morrison. But he infuriated blacks in 2008 when, after Mr. Obama won a big South Carolina primary victory, he seemed to dismiss the achievement by reminding the press that the Rev. Jesse Jackson had won the state twice and calling Mr. Obama's antiwar position ''the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.''

Many African-Americans took Mr. Clinton's fairy tale comment to mean that Mr. Obama's candidacy itself was a hopeless fantasy.

''It did get a little strained at times,'' Mr. Cummings acknowledged. ''I will never forget when President Clinton made that comment about the fairy tale. That was a painful moment for a lot of African-Americans, because we didn't see it as a fairy tale.''

He added, however, that he believed most African-Americans had moved on from their hurt, in no small part because of Mrs. Clinton's willingness to join Mr. Obama's administration and her loyalty therein. Indeed, her most important implicit endorsement among blacks may come from Mr. Obama himself.

His joint ''60 Minutes'' interview with Mrs. Clinton this year helped ease lingering doubts about tensions between the former rivals. And Mr. Obama's silence in recent months as some of his former aides have aligned themselves with Mrs. Clinton suggests that he will not try to help clear the way for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. if he decides to run.

For other black leaders, Mr. Clinton's showstopping speech at last year's Democratic convention was equally important.

''The defining moment for me was both when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state and Bill Clinton's tremendous speech on behalf of President Obama,'' said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat who backed Mr. Obama in 2008. ''Those both occurred when a lot of people in the community were paying close attention.''

The renewed connection between the Clintons and African-Americans was on display as Mr. Clinton campaigned for his close friend Terry McAuliffe in the closing weeks of the recent campaign for governor of Virginia. At a high school in a black neighborhood in Richmond, the former president received a booming ovation, punctuated by church-style shouts of ''Yes!'' and ''All right!''

''I hope all the people of other religions in the audience will forgive me, but on this Sunday, in the parlance of my native state and my culture, I'm fully aware that I am just preaching to the saved,'' Mr. Clinton said to cheers and applause.

He then praised Mr. Wilder, who endorsed Mr. Obama in the 2008 race and was also at the McAuliffe campaign event, beaming.

In an interview at the rally, Mr. Wilder recalled a long chat he had with Mr. Clinton in May. While Mr. Clinton professed not to know his wife's intentions, Mr. Wilder felt otherwise: ''I'd be less than honest if I didn't tell you I came away convinced that there's no question about her running.''

Of the tensions of 2008, the former governor said all was forgiven: ''I don't think anybody is looking back. If Hillary runs for the nomination, she gets it. Period.''

HPV vaccine could be given to boys as well as girls in UK.

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 23:01

Countries including the US and Australia already offer the HPV vaccine to boys. Photograph: Voisin/Phanie/Rex Features

Government advisers are to consider whether the HPV vaccine, routinely offered to girls at the ages of 12 and 13 since 2008 to help protect them against cervical cancer, should also be offered to boys and some men.

They are to review "all the issues" on HPV, including whether targeted vaccination would help cut the risk of anal and throat cancers among men who have sex with men as well as the wider question over whether a universal male vaccination programme given to pre-teen or teenage boys is necessary as well, an idea that has previously been rejected.

The review is revealed in draft minutes of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the UK-wide advisory body.

A decision from the government advisers on what to recommend is unlikely to be quick since JCVI has yet to establish a sub-committee to examine the arguments in detail.

There will be doubts that a UK-wide programme for boys is necessary since take-up of the HPV programme for girls is so good that experts could consider it is enough to protect the general heterosexual population.

The issue of boys getting the vaccine has already been raised in the UK and Scottish parliaments and by the UK charity Throat Cancer Foundation, which believes a UK-wide programme is needed. Supporters believe the present programmes for girls are not offering the same sort of protection for boys as there would be if both sexes were inoculated. The JCVI subcommittee is also to look at whether the programme for girls might soon need to be modified since there is a possibility manufacturers could try to get licences for two-dose courses.

The vaccination, now given in three doses over a year, has already been given to millions of girls '' usually in secondary schools '' to combat a family of viruses which can also cause warts and verrucas. They are very common and the vaccine, first under the Cervarix brand and now Gardasil, licensed for both boys and girls, is introduced before most girls are sexually active.

Half the population will have some form of HPV at some time in their life and in most cases they suffer no ill effects. The vaccine is known to be effective for eight years. It is unknown how much longer it is effective.

John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, the professional body, said: "This is to be welcomed. We have to seriously consider this measure in the light of the recent increase in oral cancer. The original decision to vaccinate girls was based on the need to prevent cervical cancer."

The US Centres for Disease Control already recommends boys have it too '' and both sexes have it in America when 11 or 12. Australia too offers the vaccine free in schools for both sexes.

The Department of Health said: "There are currently no plans to extend HPV vaccination to males, based on an assessment of currently available scientific evidence." It added: "Vaccination of boys was not recommended by the JCVI because once 80% coverage among girls has been achieved, there is little benefit in vaccinating boys to prevent cervical cancer in girls. 80% coverage for the full course of three doses of the vaccine was achieved in the first year of the HPV vaccination programme in 2008-09, and has since exceeded that level."

It has been estimated that 400 lives a year could be saved in the UK as a result of vaccinating girls before they are infected. At the moment 2,900 women are diagnosed each year with cervical cancer.

Although most girls don't start having sex until after they are 16, the NHS says getting the vaccine as early as possible will protect them in the future.

In 2010, around 4,300 men and 2,200 women were diagnosed with oral cancer, according to Cancer Research UK, a rise of a third in the last decade.

Crucial weekend for Obamacare website, begins with a shutdown

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 07:09

Crucial weekend for Obamacare website, begins with a shutdownTop News

Crucial weekend for Obamacare website, begins with a shutdown

Sat, Nov 30 01:37 AM EST

By Roberta Rampton and Sharon Begley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A crucial weekend for the troubled website that is the backbone of President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul appears to be off to a shaky start, as the U.S. government took the HealthCare.gov site offline for an unusually long maintenance period into Saturday morning.

Just hours before the Obama administration's self-imposed deadline to get the insurance shopping website working for the "vast majority" of its users by Saturday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it was taking down the website for an 11-hour period that would end at 8 a.m. EST on Saturday.

It was unclear whether the extended shutdown of the website - about seven hours longer than on typical day - represented a major setback to the Obama administration's high-stakes scramble to fix the portal that it hopes eventually will enroll about 7 million uninsured and under-insured Americans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

At the very least, the shutdown suggested that nine weeks after the website's disastrous launch on October 1 prevented most applicants from enrolling in coverage and ignited one of the biggest crises of Obama's administration, U.S. officials are nervous over whether Americans will see enough progress in the website to be satisfied.

For the administration and its Democratic allies, the stakes are enormous.

The healthcare overhaul is Obama's signature domestic achievement, a program designed to extend coverage to millions of Americans and reduce healthcare costs. To work, the program must enroll millions of young, healthy consumers whose participation in the new insurance exchanges is key to keeping costs in check.

After weeks of round-the-clock upgrades of software and hardware, Obama officials said they were poised to successfully double its capacity by this weekend, to be able to handle 50,000 insurance shoppers at one time.

But if the website does not work for the "vast majority" of visitors this weekend as the administration has promised, uninsured Americans from 36 states could face problems getting coverage by an initial December 23 deadline.

It also could create ripples that extend to the 2014 elections when control of the U.S. House of Representatives (now controlled by Republicans) and the Senate (now led by Democrats) will be up for grabs.

Obama's fellow Democrats who are up for re-election in Congress already have shown signs of distancing themselves from the president and his healthcare program. If the website does not show significant improvement soon, some Democrats - particularly the dozen U.S. senators who are from states led by conservative Republicans and who are up for re-election next year - might call for extending Obamacare's final March 31 enrollment deadline for 2014.

That would delay the fines that are mandated by the law for those who do not have insurance by that date, a scenario that insurers say would destabilize the market. It also would fuel Republicans' arguments that Obamacare, and its website, are fatally flawed and should be scrapped.

In broader political terms, the website's immediate success has become vital to Obama's credibility, which polls indicate has been tarnished by the site's problems as well as Obama's admission that he overreached in promising that everyone who liked their healthcare plan would be able to keep it under the new law.

Obama has been forced to apologize for oversimplying how the law would affect certain Americans, and has acknowledged being embarrassed and frustrated by the website's failures. Recent polls have shown that Obama's approval ratings are at the lowest point of his presidency.

"It is a lot harder to reboot public trust than it is to reboot software," said David Brailer, chief executive of the Health Evolution Partners private equity firm and a former health official in George W. Bush's administration.

"But the good thing about when you're down is that usually, you got nowhere to go but up," Obama said in an interview that aired on Friday on ABC. [ID:nL2N0JE0WE]

IS IT FIXED? HARD TO TELL

Several technology specialists told Reuters that it will be difficult to independently assess on Saturday whether the HealthCare.gov site has met the administration's goals of functioning for most users most of the time, including handling 50,000 users at once.

"There won't be anything you can tell from the outside," said Jonathan Wu, an information technology expert and co-founder of the consumer financial website ValuePenguin.

When the site opened for enrollment on October 1, many users found that they could not complete the simple task of creating an account. Now, the website is functioning better but any remaining problems lie much deeper within the site, Wu said in an interview.

Eleventh-hour checks were not encouraging, said Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in software design who said he could tell within hours of the site's launch that its problems were the results of poor system design and bugs, rather than the heavy traffic that the administration blamed initially.

"I have tested the site every several days trying to buy a health insurance plan, but haven't been able to," Hancock said.

"I think the issues the site faces now are more complex to diagnose from the front end, whereas before the site was immediately failing and returning error details," he said.

Questions also remain about the website's ability to direct payments to private insurance companies when consumers enroll in their plans. Portions of the system handling those functions are still being built, officials say.

"The real tests are: Were my premium payment and subsidy accurately calculated? Am I getting the coverage I signed up for? If my income situation changes, will the reconciliation occur in a timely fashion?" said Rick Howard, a research director at technology consultant Gartner.

A DATE AND A NUMBER

Heading into this weekend, administration officials tasked with rescuing Obamacare showed signs of confidence that the series of fixes by tech specialists would work.

The officials gave a "virtual tour" of what they had branded the "tech surge" to a group of White House reporters.

The White House also invited a group of IT specialists to tour the website's "command center," where an engineer on unpaid leave from Google Inc directs disparate contractors and monitors their progress.

It was a convincing show that the team had the crisis under control, said John Engates, chief technology officer at Rackspace, a web hosting firm in San Antonio, who participated.

Engates, who had been publicly critical of the launch, said he felt it was likely the website would be able to handle 50,000 concurrent users on Saturday, although he did not know for sure.

"Whenever you have a date and a number, you need to be pretty sure that you can hit that date and that number," Engates told Reuters.

"It's just another loss of confidence if you don't make it."

(Editing by David Lindsey and Lisa Shumaker)