Saturday, December 24, 2005

Dave: 2006 prediction: Apple will ship two generations of iPods. The first new generation, released in April, will have a satellite receiver built-in. The second will have a low-power FM transmitter built-in. 8:26:10 PM    comment []

NSA's domestic data-mining ops gathered vast troves of info.  A New York Times story today reports that as part of the Bush-approved domestic spying program, the NSA traced and analyzed far more data from phone and internet communications than previously thought. Snip: As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said. The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter. (...) Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined. The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches. One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches. Link Previously on Boing Boing: NSA spies on US: calls, emails intercepted without warrants Experiment to see if your mail is being tapped by the gov't [Boing Boing] 8:25:30 PM    comment []

NORAD tracks Santa Claus on his flight around the world. You can follow his journey. 3:28:33 PM    comment []

New TSA Guidelines from The Onion. The Onion has a new set of TSA guidelines. [Schneier on Security] 3:26:56 PM    comment []

111 Creative Commons Christmas Songs. Uwe Hermann says, Here's a list of 111 songs which are all explicitly released under a Creative Commons license (no, I did not consider songs which are merely "podsafe"!) and thus can be shared, listened to, and sometimes even modified freely. There's a great variety in style, mood, and genre of the songs: some traditional, some contemporary, some happy, some sad, and some just plain funny. Link [Boing Boing] 3:26:24 PM    comment []

Faked Research on Stem Cells Is Confirmed by Korean Panel [New York Times: International News] 3:25:53 PM    comment []

Essay: Wish List: No More Books!. Cavalierly foisting unsolicited reading material on a book lover is like buying underwear for someone you hardly know. By JOE QUEENAN. [NYT > Books] 3:24:55 PM    comment []

HOAX: "Little Red Book prompts DHS visit" was Big Fat Lie. Suspicions confirmed: The U. Mass student who said he was visited by DHS agents after requesting a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book" made the whole thing up. [Y]esterday, the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter. The professor, Brian Glyn Williams, said he went to his former student's house and asked about inconsistencies in his story. The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax, Williams said. ''I made it up," the professor recalled him saying. ''I'm sorry. . . . I'm so relieved that it's over." Link to Boston Globe report, and link to a followup story in South Coast Today. (Thanks, Wesley, and many others) Hey comrades, this calls for a little happy fun moment of Chairman Mao Quote Zen! From the so-called Little Red Book: "Say all you know and say it without reserve", "Blame not the speaker but be warned by his words" and "Correct mistakes if you have committed them and guard against them if you have not" - this is the only effective way to prevent all kinds of political dust and germs from contaminating the minds of our comrades and the body of our Blog Party." [Boing Boing] 3:24:50 PM    comment []