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The National Security Agency (NSA) is tracking the phone calls for millions of Verizon Wireless customers.

According to a new report the NSA is using Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861 to monitor “business records.”

Opponents of the Patriot act have long argued that section 1861 allows for the unlimited collection and storage of “metadata” in direct violation of privacy rights. The records collected allow the US government to track the identity of every person a Verizon customer contacts.

The NSA collects Verizon Wireless metadata in order to discover an individual’s network of associations and communication patterns.

The NSA uses the massive amount of information collected to datamine for terrorist and other illegal associations. The program was started under the Bush administration and has continued to grow in strength under President Obama. The NSA started the collection of data program on October 4, 2001 after President Bush issued a secret authorization for data collection.

As you may recall a USA Today report in 2006 exposed the program which it says had “been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth” and was “using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity.”

The NSA was started to track foreign intelligence, however, in recent years the company has become ever increasingly focused on domestic communication. In fact it was that shift in focus that caused 30-year NSA veteran William Binney to leave the agency as it shifted from foreign targets to a focus on US citizens.

Democratic senator Frank Church says of the agencies shift in focus:

“The NSA’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter.”

Do you think the NSA is overstepping its bounds?

NSA Tracking Millions Of Verizon Customer Phone Calls is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Billboard Charts used to mean something. Today, they still carry a measure of cachet, but they're not really a good reflection of what's popular and interesting in music these days. We can obviously do better.

For the most part, the billboard charts are still all about what's getting bought, which doesn't really mean much these days because, uh, people don't really buy music like they used to. That's why last year, Billboard attempted to make itself relevant again by including streaming plays in its charts.

Slacker Radio's new Engagement Quotient—EQ, for short—makes Slacker the first online streaming service to use huge amounts of user data to define how "into" the music people are when they're listening to it. This goes beyond your basic play counts that Billboard started countin last year to data about what people are "liking" and sharing. Here's a run down of the data points Slacker will be considering:

Starts – the number of times a song was started on the Slacker service

Completes – the number of times a song was listened to in its entirety

Hearts – the number of times a user “hearts” a track, requesting to hear it more frequently

Shares – the number of times a user shares a track via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest or email

Skips – the number of times a song is skipped before reaching completion

Changes – the number of times a user changes the station when a song plays

Bans – the number of times a song or artist is banned from playing again

So what does a Slacker Top 40 look like? Well, here's this week's chart, which looks different than Billboard's Top 40.

Maybe the biggest surprise between the two lists is the absence of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky from the Slacker chart. That song's not just selling well—people are very, very engaged with it, right? Intuitively we know that. Here we see one fo the limitations of Slacker's measurements: It can only measure music in its catalog. Slacker doesn't have the new Daft Punk record Random Access Memories.

Why does this matter, isn't this just industry crap? First of all, charts for music—much like ratings for television—play a big role in deciding what artists record labels are going to invest in the future. Furthermore, "engagement" is a key metric for advertisers these days. If advertising is going to fund the music industry in the future, this kind of metric will be very important.

Of course, charts are only as important as how much people pay attention to them. Slacker's Engagement Quotient and the Slacker 40 are a long way from being popular measures of what people are listening to. Still, it's nice to see someone trying to refine ancient metric past the status quo.

And he's still driving it.

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Thanks Mike (from Spain)

You enter the world naked and screaming, and if you're the leader of the Third Street Saints and President of the United States, that's how you spend a significant amount of your adulthood too. Volition has released a new trailer for Saints Row 4, which explains the plot and does so mostly in the buff.

We get to see a nice parody of Hollywood's overwrought drama, a concise summary of the aliens' virtual world prison that drives the game, and lots of blurry parts around our hero's midsection. Check it out below.

Here's some rapid-fire medical strangeness, courtesy of John Green and the rest of those lovely, lovely weirdos over at Mental Floss. Ready? Go!

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On Tuesday, Mazda Canada posted something... odd on their official Facebook page. It's supposed to be a big surprise that's going to be revealed today. What could it be? (Update: Now we know.)

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For those who just can't seem to find a standard mouse that fits comfortably in their hand, Pyott Design has come up with a 3D printed workaround that turns a $10 Logitech M100 into an infinitely adjustable alternative.

The Statial is specifically designed to replace the stock housing on the M100, and when unlocked from a central switch it features five adjustable sections that can be repositioned until the mouse feels absolutely perfect in hand.

At $70 on Shapeways the Statial is priced similar to other high-end mice that actually include more functionality, but if you prioritize comfort over a few extra buttons, it's a rather clever way to use 3D printers to upgrade existing hardware.

[Shapeways via Damn Geeky]

Send stories, photos, and anything else you might have to tips@deadspin.com.

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What if the Beatles were Nazis? That’s just one of the questions that live-action+CG+gameplay trailer for the Wolfenstein: The New Order reboot brings up. The clip has some fun perverting some of the 20^th Century’s best known photographs and shows us that the Nazis’ domination over the rest of the world is pretty all-encompassing.

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Taking a break from making games about zombies, or games about zombies, Techland are making a game about zombies (well, and skeletons), in the form of co-op first-person fantasy Hellraid. Its Game Master AI has drawn comparisons to Left 4 Dead, but this latest trailer – released to sorta coincide with E3 – is giving me serious Heretic/Hexen vibes.

There are few things in life (I mean…in games) more satisfying than shattering a skeleton and seeing the bones fly all over the room. Though it looks quite similar to Dead Island – mainly in the character animation – Hellraid won’t be open world, but appears to make up for it with an enormous number of enemies, multiple classes (Warrior, Mage, Paladin and Rogue), and neat staff-things that fire concentrated bolts of magic. Hellraid is due out this year, unless that big guy in the stocks does something about it.

Ta, VG247.

The post Hellraid E3 trailer features skeletons by the boneload, looks a bit like Hexen appeared first on PC Gamer.

Invisibility cloaks have long been under development, using reflective panels and other methods to hide physical objects. But now there is a different kind of “invisibility cloak,” one that can manipulate the speed of light in optical fibres. This makes it possible to hide events using the time cloak by placing them within a “hole in time”.

This doesn’t mean that you can hide events that have happened such as an embarrassing wedding speech or other similar events you would prefer to forget – but it does mean you can hide information, making it seem like it never existed.

The team from the Purdue University in Indiana has built on research carried out last year, managing to hide events in the path of a continuous beam of light. They were able to cloak nearly half the data put in the beam’s path, which they would otherwise be able to detect.

Joseph Lukens from Purdue University put it poignantly:

“In a sense we’re erasing this data from history.”

This particular time cloak is able to hide events by slowing down light in an optical fibre, which creates a gap in the beam. Any outside light (i.e. Information) that enters the hole becomes cloaked when the beam is sped back up. It’s as if the original beam has been taken apart and then stitched back together, excluding the original event – much like splicing a movie and hiding any record that extra scenes even existed in the first place.

So far the string of cloaks can hide up to 1.5 gigabytes per second – which can be applied to real-world data. The potential applications include securing communications, but that first requires a way to uncloak the information on the other end, allowing it to be read by a human. A more immediate use could be blocking undesirable or nefarious messages from reaching their intended recipient.

Would you use a time cloak to hide information if it was available publicly?

Time Cloak Can Hide Events From History Using A Stream Of Light is a post from: The Inquisitr

Tropical Storm Andrea is heading toward the Florida big bend, according to a 4 AM advisory from the National Weather Service (NWS) National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Check out the map below for the current projected track of Tropical Storm Andrea, which has already formed in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall in Florida later today. It will then move across southeastern Georgia and the Carolinas, reaching eastern North Carolina by Friday.

Andrea is probably already at her peak intensity with its top winds of 60 miles per hour confined to the eastern side of the storm. Once she hits land, she should lose strength fairly rapidly.

But you should pay attention even to these supposedly less dangerous storms.  I can personally report that I had the displeasure of standing in a house that was crushed by a 20,000 pound oak tree fall during a 2003 tropical storm.  It isn’t fun.

The main problems resulting from Andrea are expected to be heavy rainfall, along with possible storm surge flooding in the West Coast of Florida. As always with an Atlantic tropical storm, tornadoes could also spring up.

However, if you’re in the area that might be affected, then you need to pay attention to your local weather coverage.

For the rest of us, the news is a good reminder that the 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season is now open for business. The National Weather Service has previously forecast an active to extremely active Atlantic Hurricane season, so it’s time to check your preparations and your hurricane supplies.

Although it might seem early to start watching the skies for possible hurricanes, the season officially opens each year on June 1 and runs through November 30. And they can occasionally form even earlier. In 2003, Tropical Storm Ana formed on April 21.

Considering the forecast from NWS, Tropical Storm Andrea is just the beginning.

[Projection of Tropical Storm Andrea courtesy National Weather Service]

[tropical storm photo by NASA image from Goddard Space Flight Center]

Tropical Storm Andrea Opens Atlantic Hurricane Season [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Rock Candy Icefall

Carmel Apple Accident

Caramel Salt Harvesters

Cheesecake Daredevil

Cherry Pitters

Cookie Bear Ambush

Redrum

Fine art photographer Christopher Boffoli (previously) just released a new body of work as a continuation of his Big Appetites series where he imagines tiny people living in a world of giant food. Boffoli opens a new exhibition tomorrow night called Portion Control at Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York where he’ll also have a few copies of his forthcoming book Big Appetites. All images courtesy the artist.