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rossendryv writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and UC Berkeley's Samuelson Center filed suit in California's Northern District, asking the court to force a number of government agencies to hand over any documents they have concerning the use of social networking sites as part of investigative procedures."

An anonymous reader points out a blog post reporting that on Monday The EU Council is set to give US intelligence services full access to SWIFT banking data, despite a unanimous call by the European Parliament not to do so. "The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior ministers are apparently keen [on agreeing to] a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the US. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face to democracy in the EU. ... [W]hile the US will be able to access EU banking data, no access to US banking data by EU [authorities] is being foreseen."

mdsolar writes "In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now."

Vainglorious Coward writes "When UK hacker and Asperger's sufferer Gray McKinnon lost the judicial review of his case it seemed likely that he would be extradited to the US to face charges of hacking almost a hundred systems causing $700,000 worth of damage. Today the UK home secretary rejected his last-ditch attempt to avoid extradition adding that 'his extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith.' McKinnon's relatives are expressing concerns for his health, with his lawyer going so far as to claim that extradition would make the 43-year-old's death 'virtually certain.'"

An anonymous reader writes "At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid renowned magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document were believed to be destroyed in 1973. Turns out one survived — and is now available on Amazon."

schwit1 writes "The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrows the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August ruling that federal prosecutors went too far when seizing 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Three Navy SEALs are facing assault charges after the capture of one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, Ahmed Hashim Abed. Abed is believed to have organized the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah. The accused terrorist, who had a bloody lip, claims that he was punched in the face and not giving a foot massage, or allowed to listen to his iPod as one might expect when a SEAL team captures you. The SEALs have requested a trial by court-martial.

Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a program to detect plutonium or uranium in shipping containers has stalled because the United States has run out of helium 3, a crucial raw material needed to build the 1,300 to 1,400 machines to be deployed in ports around the world to thwart terrorists who might try to deliver a nuclear bomb to a big city by stashing it in one of the millions of containers that enter the United States every year. Helium 3 is an unusual form of the element that is formed when tritium, an ingredient of hydrogen bombs, decays — but the government mostly stopped making tritium in 1989 after accumulating a substantial stockpile of Helium 3 as a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. 'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem. Helium 3 is not hazardous or even chemically reactive, and it is not the only material that can be used for neutron detection. The Homeland Security Department has older equipment that can look for radioactivity, but it does not differentiate well between bomb fuel and innocuous materials that naturally emit radiation like cat litter, ceramic tiles and bananas — and sounds false alarms more often. In a letter to President Obama, Miller called the shortage 'a national crisis' and said the price had jumped to $2,000 a liter from $100 in the last few years. With continuing concern that Al Qaida or other terrorists will try to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States, Congress has mandated that, by 2012, all containers bound for the US be inspected overseas."

Hugh Pickens writes "The World Health Organization says that there were 'early signs of a peak' in swine flu activity in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the US. The American College Health Association, which surveys more than 250 colleges with more than three million students, said new flu cases had dropped 27 percent in the week ending on November 13th from the week before, the first drop since school resumed in the fall. Nonetheless, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of vaccination and respiratory disease at the CDC, chose her words carefully. 'We are in better shape today than we were a couple of weeks ago,' she says. 'I wish I knew if we had hit the peak. Even if a peak has occurred, half the people who are going to get sick haven't gotten sick yet.' Privately, federal health officials say they fear that if they concede the flu has peaked, Americans will become complacent and lose interest in getting vaccinated, increasing the chances of another wave. However, Dr. Lone Simonsen, a former CDC epidemiologist, says she expects a third wave in December or January, possibly beginning in the South again. Based on death rates in New York City and in Scandinavia, Simonsen argues that both 1918 and 1957 had mild spring waves followed by two stronger waves, one in fall and one in midwinter, adding that in the pandemic of 1889, the bulk of the deaths occurred in the third wave. 'If people think it's going away, they can think again.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers — and thus the US government — is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on August 29, 2005 by failing to stop the natural widening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) causing it to eventually bump up against the shore of Lake Borgne, on the city's east side. 'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,' wrote US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval. Judge Duval said he believed it was the failure to shore up the outlet that 'doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width' allowing waves on Lake Borgne to enter the Mr. Go and travel into the east side of the city, battering the levees to a degree to which they were not designed. 'One of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the US' was both predictable and preventable, testified veteran Louisiana geologist Sherwood Gagliano, a former Corps consultant."

DesScorp writes "Over the past few years, the City of Chicago has installed video cameras all over the city. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the city has not only installed its own cameras for law enforcement purposes, but with the aid of IBM, has built a network that possibly links thousands of video surveillance cameras all over Chicago. Possibly, because the city refuses to confirm just how many cameras are in the network. Critics say that Chicago is becoming the city of Big Brother. 'The city links the 1,500 cameras that police have placed in trouble spots with thousands more—police won't say how many—that have been installed by other government agencies and the private sector in city buses, businesses, public schools, subway stations, housing projects and elsewhere. Even home owners can contribute camera feeds. Rajiv Shah, an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied the issue, estimates that 15,000 cameras have been connected in what the city calls Operation Virtual Shield, its fiber-optic video-network loop.' There are so many camera feeds coming in that police and officials can't monitor them all, but when alerted to a situation, can zoom in on the area affected. The ACLU has requested a total number of video feeds and cameras, but as of yet, this information has not been supplied."

Entropy98 writes "It seems that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, known as C3, has replaced its '$8,000 Tableau/Dell server combination' with more efficient and much cheaper $300 PS3s. Each PS3 is capable of 4 million passwords per second, and C3 currently has 20 PS3s with plans to buy 40 more. Naturally this is only being used to break encryption on computers seized with a warrant and suspected of harboring child pornography."

z4ns4stu writes "Shane Harris of the National Journal describes how the US government plans to use, and has successfully used, cyber-warfare to disrupt the communications of insurgents in Iraq. 'In a 2008 article in Armed Forces Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a military "botnet," an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held concern among military officials that other nations are building up their cyber-forces more quickly. "America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere," he wrote. ... Responding to critics who say that by building up its own offensive power, the United States risks starting a new arms race, Williamson said, "We are in one, and we are losing."'"

vvaduva writes "Basic algebra involving fractions and decimals stumped a group of City University of New York freshmen — suggesting city schools aren't preparing them, a CUNY report shows. During their first math class at one of CUNY's four-year colleges, 90% of 200 students tested couldn't solve a simple algebra problem, the report by the CUNY Council of Math Chairs found. Only a third could convert a fraction into a decimal."

alphadogg writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they've discovered a way to circumvent the networking technology used by law enforcement to tap phone lines in the US. The flaws they've found 'represent a serious threat to the accuracy and completeness of wiretap records used for both criminal investigation and as evidence in trial,' the researchers say in their paper, set to be presented Thursday at a computer security conference in Chicago. Following up on earlier work on evading analog wiretap devices called loop extenders, the Penn researchers took a deep look at the newer technical standards used to enable wiretapping on telecommunication switches. They found that while these newer devices probably don't suffer from many of the bugs they'd found in the loop extender world, they do introduce new flaws. In fact, wiretaps could probably be rendered useless if the connection between the switches and law enforcement are overwhelmed with useless data, something known as a denial of service (DOS) attack."

coreboarder writes "Recently it was divulged that the Brazilian power infrastructure was compromised by hackers. Then it was announced that it was apparently faulty equipment. A downplay to the global public or an honest clarification? Either way, it raises the question: how vulnerable are we, really? With winter and all its icy glory hurtling towards those of us in the northern hemisphere, how open are we to everything from terrorist threats to simple 'pay me or else' schemes?"

DesScorp writes "In a case that tests whether online and independent journalism has the same protections as mainstream journalism, the Justice Department sent Indymedia a grand jury subpoena. It requires a list of all visitors on a day, and further, a gag order to Indymedia 'not to disclose the existence of this request.' CBS reports that 'Kristina Clair, a 34-year-old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena,' and that 'The subpoena from US Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.' Clair is being defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

Nrbelex writes "The New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the United States comes from fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, mostly Russian. 'It's a great, easy source' of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Bank and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war. But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn't secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.'"

theodp writes "A CS student blogger named Carolyn offers an interesting take on why learning from PowerPoint lectures is frustrating. Unlike an old-school chalk talk, professors who use PowerPoint tend to present topics very quickly, leaving little time to digest the visuals or to take learning-reinforcing notes. Also, profs who use the ready-made PowerPoint lectures that ship with many textbooks tend to come across as, shall we say, less than connected with their material. Then there are professors who just don't know how to use PowerPoint, a problem that is by no means limited to college classes."

Trepidity writes "The US Supreme Court held oral argument Monday in Bilski, a business-methods patent case that might also have important implications for software patents (We have previously discussed the case several times). The tone of the argument appears to be good news, as the justices were very skeptical of the broad patentability claims. They even brought up a parade of absurd hypothetical patents quite similar to the ones Slashdotters tend to mention in these kinds of debates. Roberts surmised that 'buy low, sell high' might be a patentable business method, Sotomayor wondered if speed-dating could be patentable, Breyer questioned whether a professor could patent a lesson plan that kept his students from falling asleep, and Scalia brought up the old-time radio soap opera Lorenzo Jones, featuring a hare-brained inventor with delusions of getting rich." Patently O has good blow-by-blow coverage of the day's proceedings. Official argument transcripts will be up soon, they say.