Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The more it looks like a video game, the easier this becomes.
Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA’s Targeted Killings
Targeted killing — particularly the sort carried out by the U.S. fleet of deadly flying robots — is a transactional business.
That’s a major point of The Way of The Knife, the informative new book by Mark Mazzetti, a national-security correspondent for the New York Times. The U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan kicked off with the 2004 killing of Nek Mohammed, an extremist in the tribal areas who was not a senior al-Qaida figure. Mohammed was someone the Pakistanis wanted dead. The U.S. wanted access to Pakistan’s airspace and, it was once hoped, western tribal territory, where al-Qaida operated. Over the years, the U.S. got the former and (rarely) the latter, giving birth to a quid pro quo that spread to Yemen and beyond.


Self surveillance will become a fad, then all the FBI need do is copy it from our phones...
Now Your iPhone Can Read Fingerprints, Scan Irises and ID Your Face


I'm not sure I'll know it when I see it. Perhaps we can invite this exhibit here?
Associated Press has this interesting report on an art exhibit meant to provoke thought:
Image after image splashes on the wall of the art exhibit — a snapshot of young people laughing and drinking, a picture of an elephant, an exposed belly of a woman barely covering her breasts with one arm. The photos were taken from their computers without their knowledge through a technological glitch.
Over in a corner, visitors can sort through Facebook profile photos from unwitting users through a website that organizes them by gender, country and adjectives such as “sly,” ”smug” or “easy going.” Think online dating site, for people who don’t know they are on it.
The works are part of “The Public Private,” an art exhibit that explores the gray areas of online privacy, surveillance and data collection in the age of Facebook and Google. The pieces shift across the boundaries between what’s public and private, all through the lens of technology. But lines are never clear, if there are any at all, and that can be unsettling.
Read more on KVUE.
If you’re in NYC, the exhibit runs through April 17 at The New School. It’s been running since February, and I wish I had seen coverage of it before now.


So is this a flop or a flip? Speech is protected except when you break into a system to speak?
Lillian Shupe reports:
One or more people who allegedly hacked a hospital computer network may no longer hide their identities behind the anonymity of their computers, according to a ruling from The Appellate Division of the New Jersey State Superior Court.
The court overturned a decision by the lower court to quash a subpoena issued by Warren Hospital. The hospital is seeking the identities of one or more people who spread defamatory messages by allegedly hacking into the hospital’s computer network.
Read more on NJ.com.


The problem with an Operating System that finally reaches “good enough” is that there is no great incentive to upgrade.
Microsoft Gets Ready to Pull the Life Support on Windows XP
Today marks the first day of the last year of Windows XP’s long and storied life.
… According to NetMarketShare, just over 38 percent of PCs connected to the web are still running Windows XP. Given that current XP users have already ignored three OS upgrades, it seems reasonable to assume a significant number of XP diehards still won’t upgrade even now that Microsoft is no longer issuing security updates — all of which adds up to a potentially huge number of vulnerable PCs connected to the web

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