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Former President Jimmy Carter says that he believes the NSA is likely spying on his communications, so he actually avoids using email when communicating with foreign leaders:

"You know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored," Carter told NBC's Andrea Mitchell in an interview broadcast Sunday. "And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write a letter myself, put it in the post office and mail it.

"I believe if I send an email, it will be monitored," Carter continued.

Of course, regular letters are quite frequently intercepted and read as well (the USPS already scans and stores the front and back of every piece of mail). But it's still rather telling that a former President feels that his own communications with foreign leaders are not private or secure. Someone should set him up with some encryption.

Meanwhile, in a separate interview, Carter said that he thinks Snowden's revelations were probably a good thing, even if he thinks Snowden probably broke the law.

"There's no doubt that he broke the law and that he would be susceptible, in my opinion, to prosecution if he came back here under the law," he said. "But I think it's good for Americans to know the kinds of things that have been revealed by him and others -- and that is that since 9/11 we've gone too far in intrusion on the privacy that Americans ought to enjoy as a right of citizenship."

It's not a full support for Snowden's actions, but it's a lot farther than many others have gone. Either way, Carter thinks the NSA has gone way too far:

"I think it's wrong," he said of the NSA program. "I think it's an intrusion on one of the basic human rights of Americans, is to have some degree of privacy if we don't want other people to read what we communicate."

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The ongoing battle between the EFF and law enforcement agencies over the use, control and disposal of automatic license plate reader data has produced some seriously strange responses from law enforcement officials.

One person's request for anonymized data from the LAPD's database resulted in this bizarre response last year.

When one citizen requested anonymized ALPR data from the LA County Sheriff earlier this month via a public records request, his request was denied primarily on confidentiality grounds. Again, he wanted anonymous data, but was denied based on confidentiality.

So, even anonymized data is confidential. That in itself is a strange assertion (or would be, if obfuscation wasn't the normal state of affairs in citizen-law enforcement interactions). Supporters of ALPRs claim the data is not "personal," being that it only tracks a vehicle and not a person, but, somehow, it still can't be released without sacrificing "confidentiality."

The EFF (along with the ACLU) is attempting to pry some license plate data free from this same police department. The LAPD recently filed a brief stating its reasons for denying the group's FOIA request and made another surprising argument.

The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week’s worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that “All [license plate] data is investigatory.” The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn’t matter.

The LAPD uses the "investigative records" exemption to justify withholding the data. Here's where it first explains its reasoning…

The ALPR data sought in this case- electronic records consisting of vehicles' license plates, and the date, time and location those license plates were captured by the Department's ALPR cameras constitute "records of. . .investigations conducted by ... any local police agency" which fall squarely under this statutory exemption.

And here's where it flat out tells the court that all license plate data is "under investigation."

Releasing the subject ALPR data held by the Department would likewise "expose to the public the very sensitive investigative stages of determining whether a crime has been committed." All ALPR data is investigatory - regardless of whether a license plate scan results in an immediate "hit" because, for instance, the vehicle may be stolen, the subject of an "Amber Alert," or operated by an individual with an outstanding arrest warrant... The very process of checking license plates against various law enforcement lists, whether done manually by the officer or automatically through ALPR technology, is intrinsically investigatory - to determine whether a crime may have been committed. The mere fact that ALPR data is routinely gathered and may not --initially or ever-- be associated with a specific crime is not determinative of its investigative nature.

There it is, Los Angeles drivers. Simply by driving, you are "under investigation." You may not even need to drive. You could never leave your house and still be "under investigation." As the EFF points out, this isn't how the law is supposed to work.

This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under “general warrants” that targeted no specific person or place and never expired...

[A]s we argued in the Reply brief we filed in the case last Friday, the accumulation of information merely because it might be useful in some unspecified case in the future certainly is not an “investigation” within any reasonable meaning of the word.

This is the prevailing law enforcement mentality on display: take publicly available data (as they argue in favor of ALPRs, license plate/location data has no expectation of privacy), lock it up, hold onto it for as long as possible, and when the public wants a peek behind the curtain, claim doing so would compromise investigations and harm the public.

This argument gives us little hope that law enforcement agencies are going to be in any hurry to install tough data disposal guidelines. As far as both the LAPD and LA Sheriff's Department are concerned, this data has investigative uses that preclude timely disposal or, indeed, any disposal at all. If you start eliminating "non-hit" data, you might toss out some plates that might aid in some theoretical investigation in the future.

These assertions are made even as the agencies acknowledge the privacy implications of ALPRs.

In another interesting turn in the case, both agencies fully acknowledged the privacy issues implicated by the collection of license plate data.

LAPD stated in its brief:

[T]he privacy implications of disclosure [of license plate data] are substantial. Members of the public would be justifiably concerned about LAPD releasing information regarding the specific locations of their vehicles on specific dates and times. . . . LAPD is not only asserting vehicle owners’ privacy interests. It is recognizing that those interests are grounded in federal and state law, particularly the California Constitution. Maintaining the confidentiality of ALPR data is critical . . . in relation to protecting individual citizens’ privacy interests”

But when these agencies say "privacy," they're only using it as an angle to prevent the public from seeing the collected data. Confidentiality is again cited as a reason to keep the public from looking at ostensibly public records. They're not concerned with any drivers' privacy, only in keeping the wall propped up between the public and law enforcement.

The LASD even admits that other law enforcement tools can be used to connect "anonymous" license plates with people, and use the combined info to track people as they move around Los Angeles. But this bit of clarity isn't accompanied by any push for better privacy protections.

The agencies use the fact that ALPR data collection impacts privacy to argue that—although they should still be allowed to collect this information and store it for years—they should not have to disclose any of it to the public.

There's nothing in this for citizens. If license plate data has "no expectation of privacy," the police should have no problem with turning over anonymized data, much less records pertaining directly to the requester. But the law enforcement community continues to use a double-standard that allows it to circumvent the annoyance of limiting itself to pertinent data while maintaining a wall of opacity to further distance the public from all the data it's gathering on them.

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Last day to support GaymerX! Thanks for all of your help.

Yahoo discovered, as many tech companies did last year, that they had been opted-in to broad surveillance programs operated by the NSA and GCHQ. While these companies had always responded to official requests coming through official channels (the sort of thing detailed in their transparency reports), they were unaware that these agencies were also pulling data and communications right off the internet backbone and tech company servers.

This left most companies with no way to opt out of these collections. With the global reach of these two agencies, along with the others in the "Five Eyes" surveillance network, there are very few ways to avoid becoming another tool in the surveillance state toolchest.

Yahoo is exploring one option, which would limit its exposure to surveillance efforts. In the wake of revelations showing GCHQ collected tons of Yahoo webcam chats, it announced its plan to move its center of European operations to Ireland and out of Scotland Yard's reach.

Following the Guardian's disclosures about snooping on Yahoo webcams, the company said it was "committed to preserving our users trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services." It said GCHQ's activity was "completely unacceptable..we strongly call on the world's governments to reform surveillance law."Explaining the move to Dublin, the company said: "The principal change is that Yahoo EMEA, as the new provider of services to our European users, will replace Yahoo UK Ltd as the data controller responsible for handling your personal information. Yahoo EMEA will be responsible for complying with Irish privacy and data protection laws, which are based on the European data protection directive."

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), the UK government can force UK-based service providers to turn over data from their servers. Ireland, however, operates under European data privacy laws, not the UK's, which would theoretically help Yahoo hold onto its customers' data.

The potential loss of a large data source seems to have touched off a mini-panic within the intelligence community, which strongly suggested UK Home Secretary Theresa May take the internet company aside and discuss "security concerns."

[C]harles Farr, the head of the office for security and counter-terrorism (OSCT) within the Home Office, has been pressing May to talk to Yahoo because of anxiety in Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command about the effect the move to Dublin could have on their inquiries...

"There are concerns in the Home Office about how Ripa will apply to Yahoo once it has moved its headquarters to Dublin," said a Whitehall source. "The home secretary asked to see officials from Yahoo because in Dublin they don't have equivalent laws to Ripa. This could particularly affect investigations led by Scotland Yard and the national crime agency. They regard this as a very serious issue."

Well, chances are RIPA won't apply, which would be the only reason these agencies are "concerned." They may have to go elsewhere to collect thousands of potentially naked webcam photos and videos. I'm sure the argument that terrorists will shift to Yahoo services as a result of the company's move is right around the corner. But the reality is that UK agencies will be forced to clear one additional minor hurdle before gaining access to the info it feels serves national security interests.

From Friday, investigators may have to seek information by using a more drawn out process of approaching Yahoo through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between Ireland and the UK.

And how difficult can a "mutual assistance" process actually be? As we've seen detailed repeatedly since the leaks began, the world's intelligence communities enjoy relationships that range from "symbiotic" to "incestuous." That agency heads would feel the need to send a top government figure out to persuade Yahoo to stay within the easy reach of surveillance tentacles shows that these agencies love having tons of data, but really hate having to make the slightest amount of effort.



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Excellent piece in the Washington Post on the FDA and sunscreen:

…American beachgoers will have to make do with sunscreens that dermatologists and cancer-research groups say are less effective and have changed little over the past decade.

That’s because applications for the newer sunscreen ingredients have languished for years in the bureaucracy of the Food and Drug Administration, which must approve the products before they reach consumers.

…The agency has not expanded its list of approved sunscreen ingredients since 1999. Eight ingredient applications are pending, some dating to 2003. Many of the ingredients are designed to provide broader protection from certain types of UV rays and were approved years ago in Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere.

If you want to understand how dysfunctional regulation has become ponder this sentence:

“This is a very intractable problem. I think, if possible, we are more frustrated than the manufacturers and you all are about this situation,”

Who said it? Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research! Or how about this:

Eleven months ago, in a hearing on Capitol Hill, FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg told lawmakers that sorting out the sunscreen issue was “one of the highest priorities.”

If this is high priority what happens to all the “low priority” drugs and medical devices?

The whole piece in the Washington Post is very good, read it all. I first wrote about this issue last year.

Addendum: See FDAReview.org for more on the FDA regulatory process and its reform.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Dana Goldstein writes in The Atlantic that while one of the central tenets of raising kids in America is that parents should be actively involved in their children's education — meeting with teachers, volunteering at school, and helping with homework — few parents stop to ask whether they're worth the effort. Case in point: In the largest-ever study of how parental involvement affects academic achievement researchers combed through nearly three decades' worth of longitudinal surveys of American parents and tracked 63 different measures of parental participation in kids' academic lives, from helping them with homework, to talking with them about college plans, to volunteering at their schools. What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire — regardless of a parent's race, class, or level of education. Once kids enter middle school, parental help with homework can actually bring test scores down, an effect Robinson says could be caused by the fact that many parents may have forgotten, or never truly understood, the material their children learn in school. 'As kids get older—we're talking about K-12 education — parents' abilities to help with homework are declining,' says Keith Robinson. 'Even though they may be active in helping, they may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learned it themselves, but they're still offering advice. And that means poor quality homework.'" (More, below.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter / utku: “Twitter is blocked in Turkey. On the streets of Istanbul, the action against censorship is graffiti DNS addresses.”

Over the weekend, Der Spiegel and the New York Times published another leaked document, this one detailing the NSA's breach of Huawei's servers. The end game, however, seems to be less targeted at monitoring the company for its supposed spying efforts (via its hardware) than to install NSA backdoors in hardware used by countries that would prefer not to "buy American."

The agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart, according to N.S.A. documents provided by the former contractor Edward J. Snowden. It obtained information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches that Huawei boasts connect a third of the world’s population, and monitored communications of the company’s top executives.

One of the goals of the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was to find any links between Huawei and the People’s Liberation Army, one 2010 document made clear. But the plans went further: to exploit Huawei’s technology so that when the company sold equipment to other countries — including both allies and nations that avoid buying American products — the N.S.A. could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if ordered by the president, offensive cyberoperations.

Much of this is unsurprising. The government has long held (even though it has failed to produce any proof) that Huawei is used by the Chinese government to spy on other countries via subverted hardware, so it would make sense for the NSA to have the company under surveillance. But what's happening here seems to exceed the bounds of defensive surveillance and head into corporate espionage territory.

As Karl Bode pointed out in an earlier story about the US government warning Americans away from Huawei network equipment, many of the Huawei spying allegations can be traced back to its main competitor, Cisco. Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel sees the NSA's Huawei spying as little more than a way for it to protect some of its main collection points.

[T]he articles make it clear that 3 years after they started this targeted program, SHOTGIANT, and at least a year after they gained access to the emails of Huawei’s CEO and Chair, NSA still had no evidence that Huawei is just a tool of the People’s Liberation Army, as the US government had been claiming before and since. Perhaps they’ve found evidence in the interim, but they hadn’t as recently as 2010.

Nevertheless the NSA still managed to steal Huawei’s source code. Not just so it could more easily spy on people who exclusively use Huawei’s networks. But also, it seems clear, in an attempt to prevent Huawei from winning even more business away from Cisco.

I suspect we’ll learn far more on Monday. But for now, we know that even the White House got involved in an operation targeting a company that threatens our hegemony on telecom backbones.

If there's been no evidence uncovered that Huawei equipment is being deployed with Chinese government-friendly backdoors, then the NSA is engaged in self-serving corporate espionage, one that keeps Cisco -- and consequently, the NSA -- in wide circulation.

Even if you believe this is exactly the sort of thing our intelligence agencies should be doing, it's hard to ignore the inherent hypocrisy of the government's words and actions. Even Jack Goldsmith, who has previously argued that the US needs an "invasive NSA," had this to say about the latest leak.

The Huawei revelations are devastating rebuttals to hypocritical U.S. complaints about Chinese penetration of U.S. networks, and also make USG protestations about not stealing intellectual property to help U.S. firms’ competitiveness seem like the self-serving hairsplitting that it is.

While the revelations that the NSA is surveilling a foreign company deemed untrustworthy by government officials are hardly surprising, the whole situation is tainted by the US government's hardline against Huawei. Many accusations have surfaced over the last decade but have remained unproven, even as the US government has locked Huawei out of domestic contracts and persuaded other countries to seek different vendors. This isn't passive monitoring being deployed to detect threats. This is an active invasion of a private company's internal network in order to subvert its hardware and software, all of which will likely benefit its largest competitor, either directly or indirectly. The NSA isn't Cisco's personal army, but their mutual goals (widespread Cisco deployment) are so closely aligned, the agency might as well be.

If the NSA has found any evidence that Huawei is operating on behalf of the Chinese government, now would be the time to make that information public. With Michelle Obama's goodwill tour of China underway, it's hardly beneficial for our surveillance hypocrisy to be on display (again).

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One of the unsung heroines of the Snowden story is Sarah Harrison. A statement she published on WikiLeaks in November 2013 describes her role as follows:

As a journalist I have spent the last four months with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and arrived in Germany over the weekend. I worked in Hong Kong as part of the WikiLeaks team that brokered a number of asylum offers for Snowden and negotiated his safe exit from Hong Kong to take up his legal right to seek asylum. I was travelling with him on our way to Latin America when the United States revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia. For the next 39 days I remained with him in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where I assisted in his legal application to 21 countries for asylum, including Germany, successfully securing his asylum in Russia despite substantial pressure by the United States. I then remained with him until our team was confident that he had established himself and was free from the interference of any government.

Harrison has now written a fine piece for The Guardian about the consequences for her of providing support to Snowden and WikiLeaks:

I cannot return to England, my country, because of my journalistic work with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and at WikiLeaks. There are things I feel I cannot even write. For instance, if I were to say that I hoped my work at WikiLeaks would change government behaviour, this journalistic work could be considered a crime under the UK Terrorism Act of 2000.

The act gives a definition of terrorism as an act or threat "designed to influence the government", that "is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause" and that would pose a "serious risk" to the health or safety of a section of the public. UK government officials have continually asserted that this risk is present with the disclosure of any "classified" document.

Elsewhere the act says "the government" means the government of any country -- including the US. Britain has used this act to open a terrorism investigation relating to Snowden and the journalists who worked with him, and as a pretext to enter the Guardian's offices and demand the destruction of their Snowden-related hard drives. Britain is turning into a country that can't tell its terrorists from its journalists.

She points out that she is not alone in suffering from the UK government's absurdly broad definition of "terrorism": Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda was detained for nine hours at London's Heathrow airport, and Snowden's lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, was interrogated there too. But the knock-on effects for journalism in the UK are particularly serious:

If Britain is going to investigate journalists as terrorists take and destroy our documents, force us to give up passwords and answer questions -- how can we be sure we can protect our sources? But this precedent is now set; no journalist can be certain that if they leave, enter or transit through the UK this will not happen to them.

One likely consequence of this is that international journalists will avoid passing through the UK on the way to their final destinations. More seriously, they may be unwilling to enter the UK to visit. Sadly, given the UK's increasingly besmirched reputation as a beacon of civilization with a free and effective press, that's likely to be viewed by the government there as more of a feature than a bug.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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Here's an interview I did with WGBH Boston's Innovation Hub. Please give it a listen :)

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   You can hover over the dots at the links to see what the individual episodes are. Surprising no one, that bit 'o green all the way at the bottom of BSG's second season is Black Market.

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   All over the place. Fitting.

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   So few. *sniffles*

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   I assume the stats were thrown off by an increased sample size post-season one, because there is no way season three is better than the previous two.

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   Lowest-rated is "Where the Wild Things Are," aka The One Where Buffy and Riley Had a Lot of Sex.

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    Wow, season two's Shades of Gray apparently really sucked

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Or not, in some cases. To get more mathy with it, software engineer Kevin Wu‘s Graph TV compiles the IMDB user ratings for the episodes of any given TV show and converts them into handy-dandy graphs. It’s an interesting starting point for discussion, if not the definitive determination of a show’s increasing or decreasing level of suck. For example, the ratings for season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are way too high. What the hell, IMDB users?!

(via: A.V. Club

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The latest scoop from Barton Gellman, reporting for the Washington Post on documents Ed Snowden leaked, highlights an NSA program known as MYSTIC, with some snazzy clipart... and the ability to retrieve all recordings of phone calls in certain (non-US) countries going back at least 30 days. Apparently, this is a relatively new capability -- the program launched in 2009 and reached "full capacity" in 2011.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The call buffer opens a door “into the past,” the summary says, enabling users to “retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call.” Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or “cuts,” for processing and long-term storage.

While the Washington Post agreed not to reveal what countries MYSTIC is operational in, it's difficult to see how the NSA could do this without assistance (knowing or unknowing) from the various telcos in the targeted countries. And, of course, once this effort is online, the NSA just wants to keep expanding it:

Some of the documents provided by Snowden suggest that high-volume eavesdropping may soon be extended to other countries, if it has not been already. The RETRO tool was built three years ago as a “unique one-off capability,” but last year’s secret intelligence budget named five more countries for which the MYSTIC program provides “comprehensive metadata access and content,” with a sixth expected to be in place by last October.

Basically, once the NSA has the ability to snoop on everyone's phone calls, it only wants to do more of that. And more and more. As Gellman's report notes, this seems to (once again) contradict claims by US officials, including President Obama, that "the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security... and that we take their privacy concerns into account." Of course, that all depends on how you define "spying." In the "collect it all" world of the NSA, merely collecting that data isn't considered "spying."

This program also helps to explain why the NSA has been so focused on getting that massive data center online in Bluffdale, Utah. There had been talk that the NSA had too much data to store and analyze effectively, but prior leaks didn't seem to involve enough data to really cause a problem. However, storing the audio of 30 days of every phone call in a half a dozen (or more!) countries could certainly add up quite quickly. And, indeed, that's what the documents suggest. Another document notes that this project "has long since reached the point where it was collecting and sending home far more than the bandwidth could handle." Hence: Utah.

And, of course, having full audio of all phone calls can lead to all sorts of detailed information, including information on Americans (who, remember, the NSA isn't supposed to spy on):

Highly classified briefings cite examples in which the tool offered high-stakes intelligence that would not have existed under traditional surveillance programs in which subjects were identified for targeting in advance. Unlike most of the government’s public claims about the value of controversial programs, the briefings supply names, dates, locations and fragments of intercepted calls in convincing detail.

Present and former U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide context for a classified program, acknowledged that large numbers of conversations involving Americans would be gathered from the country where RETRO operates.

The NSA does not attempt to filter out their calls, defining them as communications “acquired incidentally as a result of collection directed against appropriate foreign intelligence targets.”

At this point, these kinds of leaks aren't that surprising, but this does confirm some people's suspicions about the NSA's capabilities -- and the continuing mission creep as it gets more and more powerful in what information it can collect and store.

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Announcing the 2014 Beat The Blerch 10k/half/full marathon. September 21st in Carnation, WA.

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On Friday afternoon, we wrote about the basic non-story about how NTIA (a part of the Commerce Department) will be relinquishing what little "control" it had over ICANN's IANA function. The US government already had little to no actual say over anything that ICANN was doing. The organization has been almost entirely independent from the beginning, and this move really just helps to clarify things, while actually taking some pressure off of ICANN so that other countries can't whine and complain (incorrectly) that the internet is "under US control."

Still, with headlines everywhere screaming about how the US is "giving up control" over the internet, you had to know that it was going to become some sort of political issue. And, indeed, a bunch of politicians are up in arms about this, with the most vocal (by far) critic of this move being Rep. Mary Bono, who tweeted angrily on Friday about how we should all be concerned about this and how we need to "keep the internet!"

Of course, since some of us have memories that go back more than a month or so, it's not that difficult to remember Rep. Mary Bono was also one of the most vehement politicians against net neutrality. In fact, just three years ago, in launching an attack on net neutrality, this very same Rep. Mary Bono was screaming about stopping the "government takeover of the internet." Sadly, that tweet is now deleted (gee... wonder why?).

Still, we're curious about all of this, and are hoping that Rep. Bono can answer this basic question. If we needed to "stop the government takeover of the internet" a few years ago... and yet, today, it's an incredibly important job for the government to "keep the internet," what, exactly, is Rep. Bono's position on US government control over the internet? Or is it just whatever bogus talking point she can use to fire up constituents into believing the government is about to do something bad?

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Most of us are rarely without our smartphones in hand. These powerful supercomputers keep us connected to the world and the people we love. But we're only at the beginning; we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with mobile technology. That’s why we’re so excited about wearables—they understand the context of the world around you, and you can interact with them simply and efficiently, with just a glance or a spoken word.

Android Wear: Information that moves with you 
Today we’re announcing Android Wear, a project that extends Android to wearables. And we’re starting with the most familiar wearable—watches. Going well beyond the mere act of just telling you the time, a range of new devices along with an expansive catalogue of apps will give you:

• Useful information when you need it most. Android Wear shows you info and suggestions you need, right when you need them. The wide variety of Android applications means you’ll receive the latest posts and updates from your favorite social apps, chats from your preferred messaging apps, notifications from shopping, news and photography apps, and more. 
• Straight answers to spoken questions. Just say “Ok Google” to ask questions, like how many calories are in an avocado, what time your flight leaves, and the score of the game. Or say “Ok Google” to get stuff done, like calling a taxi, sending a text, making a restaurant reservation or setting an alarm. 
• The ability to better monitor your health and fitness. Hit your exercise goals with reminders and fitness summaries from Android Wear. Your favorite fitness apps can give you real-time speed, distance and time information on your wrist for your run, cycle or walk. 
• Your key to a multiscreen world. Android Wear lets you access and control other devices from your wrist. Just say “Ok Google” to fire up a music playlist on your phone, or cast your favorite movie to your TV. There’s a lot of possibilities here so we’re eager to see what developers build. 

Developer Preview 
If you’re a developer, there’s a new section on developer.android.com/wear focused on wearables. Starting today, you can download a Developer Preview so you can tailor your existing app notifications for watches powered by Android Wear. Because Android for wearables works with Android's rich notification system, many apps will already work well. Look out for more developer resources and APIs coming soon. We’re also already working with several consumer electronics manufacturers, including Asus, HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung; chip makers Broadcom, Imagination, Intel, Mediatek and Qualcomm; and fashion brands like the Fossil Group to bring you watches powered by Android Wear later this year.
We're always seeking new ways for technology to help people live their lives and this is just another step in that journey. Here’s to getting the most out of the many screens you use every day—whether in your car, in your pocket or, very soon, on your wrist.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Android, Chrome & Apps

In the realm of both embracing new business models in video games and generally being an all around awesome company, it doesn't get a whole lot better than Double Fine. If we were to write a playbook for a gaming company, it would probably read like Double Fine's history, from producing enormously entertaining games, to embracing crowd-funding models, to treating their fans in a manner too rare in their industry.

Reader Leo Loikkanen writes in about the latest example of the company's impressive actions, which involve an attempted game called Bad Golf 2 (there never was a Bad Golf 1, so don't go looking for it), left unpublished until fans picked up the concept and decided to make the game themselves.

Perhaps Bad Golf 2 will prove to be the One Direction of Double Fine's latest Amnesia Fortnight prototype-off. Not selected as a winning project in the X-Factorish voting, it seemed destined to never become a reality – until fans decided to make it anyway. And now it's generating more headlines than any of the "official" picks did.

That's because fourteen fans of Double Fine are collaborating on the company's own website to produce this game themselves. So, instead of the game never being produced, it will be realized by dedicated and passionate fans. While many companies might go berserk over this, Double Fine is not your average company. From the top down, everyone seems thrilled.

BG2 ideasmith Patrick Hackett, a ‘tech guru’ at Double Fine, told Eurogamer that “Personally, I was flattered by the idea that people would want to collaborate to make a game idea of mine. I really couldn’t have been more excited to hear about this idea and told them I’d support them as much as I could.”

“As for it being Double Fine’s property – Greg and I brought the situation up to Tim and Justin and they approved of the idea, citing that any production should remain in the creative commons. Because of that, the project’s source control repository is available for free and the final product will never be sold.”

This very specifically bucks every rebuttal typically offered by those that advocate for strong and stronger protection of intellectual property. Somehow, a company is giving free access to their own source code for a game based on IP the company developed, and is happy about doing so, while fans of the company are creating the game under the full knowledge that there won't be any monetary compensation. How could any of that be possible if we relied on the words of Electronic Arts and their ilk?

The answer is that creation and collaboration are a natural part of the human psyche, and they're spurred on when the collaborating parties all treat one another like human beings. Meanwhile, Double Fine is already taking an interest in the project's success as an avenue to then release their own Bad Golf 3 game, should the project pan out. Everyone wins, all because nobody brought the legal hammer down to protect their intellectual property and managed to treat their fans like human beings.

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The Attorney-General's department in Australia is apparently pushing for new laws down under that would force anyone who's asked to hand over their private encryption keys -- and that covers both end users and service providers. Buried in the middle of a submission concerning revising Australia's wiretapping laws, the AG's office notes:

The Department is also advised that sophisticated criminals and terrorists are exploiting encryption and related counter-interception techniques to frustrate law enforcement and security investigations, either by taking advantage of default-encrypted communications services or by adopting advanced encryption solutions.

The Department’s current view is that law enforcement, anti-corruption and national security agencies should be permitted to apply to an independent issuing authority for a warrant authorising the agency to issue ‘intelligibility assistance notices’ to service providers or other persons. The issuing authority should be permitted to impose conditions or restrictions on the scope of this authority.

[....]

Under this approach, the person receiving a notice would be required to provide ‘information or assistance’ to place information obtained under the warrant into an intelligible form. The person would not be required to hand over copies of the communication in an intelligible form, and, a notice would not compel a person to do something which they are not reasonably capable of doing. Failure to comply with a notice would constitute a criminal offence, consistent with the Crimes Act.

The above approach is consistent with the approach taken by the United Kingdom, which permits officials of law enforcement and national security agencies to, where authorised under a warrant, issue a notice requiring a person to provide assistance in connection with accessing encrypted communications. Similarly, South African law permits agencies to apply to a judicial officer for a direction requiring a person to provide information to the agency to enable the agency to decrypt lawfully intercepted communications.

The Orwellian nature of "intelligibility assistance notices" is fairly striking. Basically, this says if you don't make encrypted communication "intelligible" upon request, you would have violated criminal law. It's kind of funny how it claims this doesn't require anyone to hand over communication in an intelligible form... because it just asks for the encrypted content and the key to decrypt them. Which, you know, is basically the same damn thing.

Meanwhile, at the same time as part of the same discussion over wiretapping laws, there's an effort under way in Australia to force service providers into a big data retention scheme, forcing them to hold onto all sorts of data for law enforcement purposes. Incredibly, Australian officials seem to be using the NSA/Snowden leaks as the impetus for this.

Intelligence agency ASIO is using the Snowden leaks to bolster its case for laws forcing Australian telecommunications companies to store certain types of customers' internet and telephone data for a period of what some law enforcement agencies would like to be two years.

ASIO also, like the AG's office, seems quite concerned about you damn kids and all your encrypting:

"Since the Snowden leaks, public reporting suggests the level of encryption on the internet has increased substantially," ASIO said.

"In direct response to these leaks, the technology industry is driving the development of new internet standards with the goal of having all web activity encrypted, which will make the challenges of traditional telecommunications interception for necessary national security purposes far more complex."

So, even if everything's getting encrypted, certain law enforcement interests seem hell-bent on having everything collected and easy (forced) availability of private keys. If you happen to live in Australia, you might want to speak up about what's about to happen to what you thought were your private communications and browsing activity.

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"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear," right? Here's how that works in reality. (via Reason)

On Jan. 5, 2012, Paul Valin called the police to report he'd found a backpack containing what he believed to be meth-making equipment. That simple act of good citizenship landed his and wife Cindy's house on the National Clandestine Laboratory Register [NCLR], the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's list of meth labs.

Valin spotted a backpack in a river while kayaking. He took it home and opened it up looking for some identification that might point to its owner. Instead, he found tubing and chemicals. Being a good citizen (with nothing to hide), he called local law enforcement who came and removed the backpack… and then put him on a federal list that put his house in the same category as property where drugs had been seized (you know, as opposed to voluntarily and proactively given to police officers).

The NCLR's website openly admits that no federal agency verifies the information being forwarded to it. Valin's house was added to this list by local law enforcement, who filled out a standard form that failed to note that Valin had found the backpack and at no point had the "drug lab" ever crossed the threshold of his house (it had been in the back of Valin's pickup the entire time).

Once Valin was made aware of his home's placement on this list by a local TV reporter, he contacted the DEA in hopes of being delisted.

Valin sent an email to the DEA explaining the facts of his case and asking that his address be removed from the NCLR. The reply he received three weeks later was not encouraging.

An unsigned email from NCLR@doj.gov explained that Valin's address had been listed because of a Clandestine Laboratory Seizure form the DMPD submitted to the DEA following the collection of the backpack.

According to the email, the DMPD officer who filled out the report had checked the boxes for "abandoned lab" and "boxed lab," but didn't include any other information, such as where and how Valin found the backpack.

The email also stated that the DEA was only the "caretaker" of the NCLR site and, again, pointed out that it doesn't perform any sort of verification of submitted forms. According to the email, Valin had a couple of options: persuade the Des Moines, IA police department to contact the DEA and straighten out its paperwork error or have a local health agency declare his home free from drug contamination.

Unsurprisingly, the DEA's suggestions were both dead ends.

The second option isn't possible. No local or state health agencies in Iowa conducts such inspections. The state hasn't even set any standards for what constitutes meth-related contamination.

Valin hasn't had much luck with the first option, either. He's still waiting for a reply to the voicemails he left at the DMPD phone number he was told to call.

The good news is that someone finally decided to do something about this error. Special Agent Eric Neubauer of the El Paso branch of the DEA took the Des Moines Police Dept. investigative report (which detailed the whole chain of events) provided to him by Iowa Watchdog and used that info to delist Valin's home. The DMPD still hasn't explained why the details on its internal investigative report failed to make their way onto the form sent to the DEA -- an omission that put Valin's home on a national "drug lab" watchlist for two years.

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A new Google patent has surfaced at the US Patent and Trademark Office, revealing an advanced touchscreen radial menu system which could one day come to Android. The radial or pie-like menu system is a circular system configured with various commands and functions. The radial menu is separated into segments that become activated when selected, revealing additional options, or launching a function.

According to the patent, a user would use their finger to select an area on their touchscreen, acting as an anchor point for the menu. Then, while keeping the first finger point in place, a user can place a second finger on the touchscreen to determine the radius of the pie shaped menu. A user may then swipe their finger, spinning the pie-like menu, as seen in State 1 below. According to State 2, a user can move their finger from the position of Stage 1 to Stage 2 to determine if an additional sub-menu item appears. And lastly, as seen in Stage 3, if a sub-menu does appear, it can be selected to launch a particular application, function, and so forth.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a patent from Google surrounding a radial menu. Last summer a similar patent was published by Google, revealing another radial like menu. Last summer’s patent seemed to depict a radial menu being displayed after swiping up from the bottom or swiping from the side of a device. While they look similar, these two patents are very different in their functionality. The new patent does away with the bottom or side swiping method to activate the radial menu and greatly expands upon how the menu is interacted with once display.

This also isn’t the first time we’ve seen a radial menu in Android. The old stock or AOSP browser comes with pie-like controls as an experimental feature, the stock camera’s menu system was replaced with a similar looking and functioning menu system in Android 4.3, and custom ROM fans familiar with Paranoid Android are partial to the ROM’s PIE navigation system. Additionally, those familiar with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 are probably familiar with Samsung’s take on radial menu’s with their “Air command” feature.

Google filed for this radial menu patent back in Q3 2012 and was just published on March 13, 2014. As we’ve come to know, patents don’t always equate to product launches, they’re just ideas. We may never see this type of menu system come to Android, Chrome OS, or any other Google product in the future. Google IO 2014 is just around the corner, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled just in case.

[Source: Patent Bolt]

You may have heard that the FDA recently proposed some big changes to the Nutrition Facts label, changes the organization is hoping will help people better understand the food they are eating, especially when it comes to portion sizes and calories. Here's a breakdown of what the new label will look like — and if you support it, what you can do to help make it a reality.

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As the scandal over the CIA spying on Senate staffers charged with oversight of the CIA deepens, it's now come out that the White House was fully aware that the CIA was pushing forward with a criminal complaint against those very same staffers and did nothing to stop it. It's been reported that the White House is standing strongly behind the CIA on this one, and that report confirms some of the serious Constitutional/separation of powers questions that have been raised over this incident.

Having the White House be supportive of the CIA not only spying on its overseers, but then (even more ridiculously) filing a criminal complaint against those same staffers for doing their job speaks volumes about how this White House views Congressional oversight of its giant spying machine. It views it with contempt. It only reinforces how the claims that have been stated repeatedly over the past few months that there is plenty of oversight of the intelligence community are completely hogwash.

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For some the challenge of making lunch is simply to remember to bring it to work, or trying to prep ahead of time. For others, it's trying to perfect the art of the truly beautiful lunch bento box. One of the places that emphasizes the later, of course, is Pinterest.

A rough search for lunch ideas on the social media site and you will be inundated with the most intricate and sometimes alarming kyaraben bento boxes. Whether your making these for kids, or for yourself, here are a few lunches to inspires you.

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A year ago, NPR's Planet Money podcast had a show detailing one of the most horrific consumer experiences around: buying a car. The main reason it was deemed that the process was so ridiculous and unpleasant was a variety of state laws that ban car makers from selling directly, and instead require a network of dealerships. A research paper highlighted how these state laws have been a massive boon to the owners of dealerships, but have seriously harmed automakers themselves. It has also shown how these laws are open to significant corruption issues, since dealers generate tremendous local tax revenue:

States earn about 20 percent of all state sales taxes from auto dealers, and auto dealerships can easily account for 7-8 percent of all retail employment.... The bulk of these taxes (89 percent) are generated by new car dealerships, those with whom manufacturers deal directly. As a result, car dealerships, and especially local or state car dealership associations, have been able to exert influence over local legislatures. This has resulted in a set of state laws that almost guarantee dealership profitability and survival--albeit at the expense of manufacturer profits. Given these laws, manufacturers do have a financial interest in closing down new car dealerships, and in choosing which ones wil close. Additionally, available evidence and theory suggests that as a result of these laws, distribution costs and retail prices are higher than they otherwise would be; and this is particularly true for Detroit's Big Three car manufacturers--which is likely another factor contributing to their losses in market share vis-a-vis other manufacturers.

There is basically no valid reason for such laws. They serve no purpose other than to enrich local car dealership owners and state tax coffers at the expense of everyone else -- especially the public.

And yet, because these laws benefit both the politicians in charge and local dealerships, which tend to have strong lobbying power, they stay in place. That fight has been getting more notice lately, in large part because of Tesla, the innovative electric car company that has wowed nearly everyone who's driven one. A few years ago, we wrote about dealerships starting to complain about Tesla and it's plan to sell direct via the web, but with company-owned "showrooms." Tesla reasonably argued that these are not dealerships, and such laws didn't apply. Car dealers have flexed their political muscle to get various states to basically make it illegal to buy Teslas. This has even reached insane levels, with dealerships claiming that Tesla's website violates California DMV rules.

Things have been heating up quite a bit in the past few weeks. In late February, New York moved forward with some anti-Tesla legislation. On Monday of this week, Bloomberg had a long article about how dealers were freaking out about Tesla, with various challenges in Texas, Ohio, Arizona and elsewhere. Then, Tuesday morning Tesla itself announced that it may be forced to close the doors on its showrooms in New Jersey, after dealers went to the NJ Motor Vehicle Commission to complain about Tesla daring to sell direct. By late Tuesday afternoon, the Commission had officially approved the regulation banning Tesla from selling the car in the state.

This is insane on any number of levels. Not only is the car better for the environment, reviewers write about the car and talk about how it may be the best car ever built.

In response to this, entrepreneur/investor Paul Graham put it succinctly that banning Tesla "is an index of the corruptness of state governments" in the same manner as cities banning Uber or other disruptive new services. As in nearly all of those cases, the dealers are (laughingly) trying to argue that this is a "consumer protection issue." Again, the research linked above notes there's basically nothing to that argument, and safety reviews of the Tesla have suggested the car is incredibly safe. Besides, what does the safety of a car have to do with dealerships? Dealers try to claim that local dealers are "more committed to taking care of that area's customers." And yet they provide no evidence to support that -- mainly because there is none.

What's particularly hilarious, is that this move comes just days after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie talked up the power of the free market and against government intervention in business:

“We need to talk about the fact that we are for a free-market society that allows your effort and ingenuity to determine your success, not the cold, hard hand of the government.”

Right up and until the biggest supporters of state taxes demand your own government kills off sales of an innovative new competitor. Then, the "cold, hard hand of government" smacks you down.

The facts here are pretty simple: Tesla has built an innovative car, and gone with a pretty standard way of selling almost every non-automobile product: sell direct to a public who wants it. Dealers and state politicians, on the other hand, are basically teaming up in a corrupt manner to harm everyone (especially the car buying public) but themselves, and then having the gall to claim that they're doing so for the sake of "consumer protection"? No one's buying that excuse. Beyond the research above, plenty of others have pointed out the absurdity of this argument. Last year, professor Dan Crane debunked that basic claim:

A second argument is that having local dealers is necessary to ensure that customers are adequately served. For example, Bob Glaser of the North Carolina Automobile Dealer’s Association has asserted that the restrictions are a form of “consumer protection,” since “a dealer who has invested a significant amount of capital in a community is more committed to taking care of that area’s customers.” The obvious rejoinder is that Tesla has as much or more of an interest as the dealers in seeing that customers get the level of service they’re willing to pay for. If Tesla gets a bad reputation for quality, it will fail. I suppose that one might worry if Tesla were a fly-by-night operation selling customers an expensive durable good at a high price and then fleeing with its profits and leaving customers without support. But that’s obviously unlikely of a company that’s pouring billions of dollars into the creation of a new product and a recharging and battery swapping infrastructure. Car manufacturers make considerably larger fixed capital investments than do dealers and I’m sure that the dealer failure and exit rate is considerably higher than that of manufacturers.

A related argument is that dealers play an important role in complying with local laws regarding titling and safety inspection. But this argument doesn’t work either. First, observe that at present most states only prohibit manufacturers from opening their own dealerships—they don’t prohibit online sales from outside the state. (North Carolina recently passed a statute banning online sales as well). There’s no reason why a manufacturer-owned dealership should be less capable of complying with local laws than an independent dealer. Second, why should Internet sales involve evasion of state titling and safety inspection laws? Internet sales can just as easily be subject to the same titling and inspection requirements as dealer-initiated sales.

Furthermore, if it were true that consumers were harmed by letting companies sell directly, you'd think consumer advocates would be supporting the dealers. But they're not. They're supporting Tesla:

Jack Gillis, with the Consumer Federation of America, disagrees. Customers actually don't like haggling over prices, as evidenced by the fact that we haggle over almost nothing else except cars. A one-price system, like Tesla's, is fairer, Gillis said, because it's more transparent and doesn't put less belligerent shoppers at a disadvantage. If the price is too high, customers just won't buy the product.

In the end, New Jersey's actions just confirm what lots of people already knew, that New Jersey is hopelessly corrupt. But, this is nothing new. As Dan O'Connor points out in his story about all of this, a century ago, people did the same thing against the automobile, and in favor of horses. The (I'm not joking) Horse Association of America was created more or less to fight back against those evil cars, and presented talking points like the following:

If the extended displacement of horses and mules by motors resulted in economic gain to the nation as a whole, the campaign of the Horse Association of America to increase the production and use of horses and mules would not be warranted. The Association states that ample evidence has already been secured to prove that in many instances, such displacement is economically unsound, resulting in less reliable, less efficient service at greater cost. Consumers, grain dealers and grain producers alike suffer from such substitution, which, according to a leading traffic manager in New York City, is due chiefly to ignorance on the part of business men regarding the actual cost of operating horse drawn and motorized equipment.

That sounds mighty familiar. A century ago, politicians mostly saw through the insanity of it. But there wasn't so much money at stake back then. Today is different, and we all suffer because of it.

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Bennett Haselton writes with a bit of online detective work done with a little help from some (internet-distributed) friends: "A website that was temporarily inaccessible on my Comcast Internet connection (but accessible to my friends on other providers) led me to investigate further. Using a perl script, I found a sampling of websites that were inaccessible on Comcast (hostnames not resolving on DNS) but were working on other networks. Then I used Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay volunteers 25 cents apiece to check if they could access the website, and confirmed that (most) Comcast users were blocked from accessing it while users on other providers were not. The number of individual websites similarly inaccessible on Comcast could potentially be in the millions." Read on for the details.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Associated Press has a story about how the US intelligence community is ramping up efforts to stop the next Ed Snowden by basically monitoring nearly everything that government employees and contractors with security clearance do:

Stung by internal security lapses, U.S. intelligence officials plan to use a sweeping electronic system to continually monitor workers with secret clearances.... The system is intended to identify rogue agents, corrupt officials and leakers and draws on a Defense Department model under development for more than a decade.... Intelligence officials have long wanted a computerized system that could monitor employees, in part to foil leakers like former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden....

Of course, now that it's about the intelligence community spying on the intelligence community, those government employees are suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable about all of this:

Privacy advocates and government employee union officials expressed concerns that electronic monitoring could intrude into individuals' private lives, prompt flawed investigations and put sensitive personal data at greater risk.

The officials backing the program claim this is no real risk because "the system would have safeguards." Of course, that's the excuse we've been hearing for ages about the bulk data collection programs that the NSA and FBI use -- that supposedly they have "safeguards." Considering that the government employees union doesn't seem satisfied with that response indicates that the folks who actually work in the intelligence community know that such "safeguards" are pretty bogus and do little to actually protect privacy.

Of course, there seems to be no recognition from those who are complaining about this new system that it shows why the American public (and, well, the rest of the world) are so concerned about the other surveillance programs of the intelligence community.

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If there's anything as labyrinthine as copyright law, it's divorce law. Smokey Robinson, the composer of several Motown hits, is combining both.

Smokey Robinson sued his ex-wife, Claudette Rogers Robinson, seeking declaratory judgment that he may terminate and "recapture" the copyrights to all the songs he wrote during their marriage, and that she cannot claim interest in them under California community property law.

Robinson is reclaiming the rights to his pre-1978 songs from Jobete Music Co., something many artists are doing as copyright termination goes into effect. Robinson's main problem, oddly, isn't Jobete arguing that the songs were "work for hire," but rather that his ex-wife (who he divorced in 1985) believes she should be entitled to 50% of whatever income these songs generate.

The Dec. 2, 2013 letter from counsel is attached to the complaint as Exhibit A. In it, Claudette claims 50 percent interest and demands 50 percent payment of the royalties and advances from all songs she claims as community property.

"She is entitled to half the publisher's share and half the writer's share," Claudette's counsel wrote in a Dec. 6 follow-up email.

Robinson's filing points to a couple of aspects which would seem to lock Claudette Rogers-Robinson out of claiming half of his songs' profits.

"[T]he 1976 Copyright Act expressly provides that these 'recaptured' copyrights belong to the author alone, which is plaintiff. Moreover, the 1976 Copyright Act precludes any transfer of those copyrights before the terminations themselves are effective. Thus, any transfer of such rights to any third party, whether defendant or a music publisher, was barred by the 1976 Copyright Act, and is therefore null and void."

So, according to this claim, his ex-wife couldn't have made any legal claim to the songs prior to rights termination, and seems to prevent her from doing so post-recapture. But another point Robinson raises seems to conflict with the assumptions of the current life+70 years copyright term.

"As a result of the divorce, all copyrights, contract, and/or royalty rights to the musical compositions created between November 7, 1959 and May 30, 1985 were purportedly divided between plaintiff and defendant as tenants-in-common. Defendant also received a monthly spousal support payment of substantial sums and significant real and personal property."

However, Smokey says: "Defendant did not write any part of any of the musical compositions at issue; her interest was awarded on the basis of community property principles alone."

By Smokey's reasoning, any person who didn't partake in the creative process of copyrighted works should be locked out of profiting from the works. This raises a question: if his ex-wife has no right to profit from Smokey's songs, why should Smokey's descendants?

The current copyright term allows heirs or other rights holders to exploit copyrighted material for 70 years after the death of the creator. Arguing that passing copyright control on to heirs is roughly comparable to an inheritance relies more on "community property principles" than copyright law. But intellectual property isn't directly comparable to "real property" (land, houses, belongings, etc.). Real property has no set (but highly arbitrary) expiration date and isn't subject to a "limited" period of protection.

Robinson asserts he "solely" owns these songs because he is the composer. Following this line of thinking, Robinson's descendants should have no legal claim to profits from Robinson's creations for 70 years after his death. If copyright law were deployed honestly, his "sole creator" claim would terminate his claim -- and any of his heirs' -- at the time of his death. But it isn't. And everyone involved -- from the labels claiming pre-1978 songs were "work for hire" to Smokey Robinson claiming his ex-wife isn't entitled to profits (but presumably his heirs are) -- is twisting the law to assert control.

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BAHFest is coming back! This time, we're doing two events - one in Cambridge, and one in San Francisco. So, start sharpening your fake evolutionary theories now!