Infinite Unknown

- Update: DARPA Cyber Chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko Heads To Google (The Security Ledger, April 14, 2013):

Noted hacker and innovator Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a project manager for cyber security research at DARPA for the past three years- will be setting up shop in the Googleplex, according to a post on his Twitter feed.

Zatko, who earned fame as a founding member of the early 1990s Boston-area hacker confab The L0pht and later as a division scientist at government contractor BBN Technologies, announced his departure from DARPA following a three-year stint as a Program Manager in DARPA’s Information Innovation Office on Friday. “Given what we all pulled off within the USG, let’s see if it can be done even better from outside. Goodbye DARPA, hello Google!” he Tweeted. Continue reading »

Tags: DARPA, Economy, Global News, Google, Hacker

- In Case The Mainstream Media Didn’t Get The Memo, I Crush The Apple Reality Distortion Field On CNBC (ZeroHedge, Feb 13, 2013)

Tags: Apple, Economy, Global News, Google, Nasdaq, Reggie Middleton, Stock Market

- Apple, Big Hedge Fund Stars & The Sell Side/Vaudeville Act To Burn Your Hard Earned Money As A Punchline That’s Just Not Funny (ZeroHedge, Feb 7, 2013)

Tags: Apple, Economy, Global News, Google, Hedge Funds, Nasdaq, Stock Market, U.S.

Human rights activists are turning to Google Earth to identify the vast network of prison camps that dot the North Korean countryside and hold as many as 200,000 people deemed hostile to the regime.

A number of structures have been identifed at camp 22. These include guard houses and burial grounds

- Google Earth exposes North Korea’s secret prison camps (Telegraph, Jan 25, 2013):

Rights groups are pushing the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to open an international investigation into Pyongyang’s “deplorable” record on its citizens’ rights, including a system of political prisons that has operated for more than 50 years.

Pyongyang insists that the camps do not exist and are merely foreign propaganda, but the advent of high-resolution, free images from outer space has disproved that claim.

On January 18, the North Korean Economy Watch website announced that a new camp had been identified alongside an existing detention facility in Kaechon, South Pyongan Province.

Continue reading »

Tags: Dictatorship, Global News, Google, Google Earth, Government, North Korea, Politics, Society

- Biggest Social Media Sites Censor Alternative News (ZeroHedge, Dec 14, 2012):

The mainstream media skews the news to defend the status quo, and serves the interests of the rich and powerful.

But at least web news sources are free of censorship … one would hope.

Unfortunately, that’s not true.

Facebook pays low-wage foreign workers to delete certain content based upon a censorship list. For example, Facebook deletes accounts created by any Palestinian resistance groups.

Digg was caught censoring stories which were controversial or too critical of the government. See this and this.

Many accuse Youtube of blatant censorship.

Reddit – the 133rd most popular website worldwide on the Internet – is also censoring.

I’m not talking about censoring specific websites (For example, I was informed today that Reddit’s News category censors all stories from this website.  But that’s just an example).  I’m talking about censoring entire categories of news media.

Continue reading »

Tags: Censorship, Digg, Economy, Facebook, Global News, Google, Government, Internet, Politics, Reddit, Society, U.S., YouTube

- Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers (Mother Jones, Dec 5, 2012):

First things first: No, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not using drones to vaporize poachers. But thanks to a five million dollar grant awarded by Google on Tuesday, the organization is expanding its use of unmanned aerial vehicles to track and deter criminals who illegally hunt endangered animal species around the world.

WWF spokesman Lee Poston is not calling these vehicles drones, because he doesn’t want people to confuse them with the military kind. According to Poston, they are “sophisticated radio-controlled devices like hobbyists use” that can be “controlled from your iPad or other device.” But the WWF website does call them “conservation drones.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Drones, Global News, Google, Surveillance, Technology

- How Amazon Followed Google Into the World of Secret Servers (Wired, Nov 30, 2012):

Chris Pinkham was walking through a data center that would one day house Amazon’s seminal cloud computing service — the Elastic Compute Cloud — when he came face to face with a cage of Google machines.

This was a decade ago, when Pinkham oversaw the hardware and software that ran Amazon, and the company was considering a spot in the data center, which housed machines for many web operations and other businesses. Google would later pull a curtain around its data-center hardware, moving much of it into private facilities, but in those days, it was easier for competitors like Pinkham to lay their eyes on Google machines.

Pinkham was struck by how different the machines looked — and how hot they were. Even then, Google was running its website on dirt-cheap, stripped-down servers slotted into extremely tight spaces. They didn’t even have plastic cases.

“They were clearly not your average Dell, HP, IBM servers. They were white box machines, very densely packed. They weren’t in containers. They were just blades jammed into these custom racks,” remembers Pinkham, who went on to lead the team that built the Elastic Compute Cloud and now runs a cloud software startup called Nimbula. “And I remember a lot of heat coming off them — an indication of a lot of concentrated power.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Amazon, Economy, Global News, Google, Internet, Technology

- NSA Refuses To Release Secret Obama Directive On Cybersecurity (Infowars, Nov 21, 2012):

Order may allow military takeover of internet

The National Security Agency has refused to release details of a secret presidential directive which experts believe could allow the military and intelligence agencies to operate on the networks of private companies, such as Google and Facebook.

As we reported last week, an article in the Washington Post, cited several US officials saying that Obama signed off on the secret cybersecurity order, believed to widely expand NSA’s spying authorities, in mid-October.

“The new directive is the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an “offensive” and a “defensive” action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.” the report states.

In response to the move, lawyers with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (PDF) demanding that the Obama administration make public the text of the directive.

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Censorship, Cyber Attack, Cyber War, Dictatorship, Facebook, Fascism, Freedom of Information Act, Global News, Google, Government, Health, Internet, New World Order, NSA, Obama administration, Politics, Surveillance, U.S.

Imagine my total absence of shock.

- Google Says Government Surveillance Growing (Information Week, Nov 13, 2012)

Tags: 1984, Big Brother, Dictatorship, Fascism, George Orwell, Global News, Google, Government, New World Order, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

- Google.com Blocked in China During 18th Party Congress (IBTimes, Nov 9, 2012)

Tags: Censorship, China, Dictatorship, Global News, Google, Government, Internet, Politics, Society