"The entire effort was given an extra kick-start earlier this year when the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a group of 70 police chiefs from major cities around the U.S., crafted a document that called for the FCC to enact changes that would address the issue of stolen mobile phone usage. The various carriers will reportedly deploy their own separate databases over the course of the next six months, with plans to merge the databases into one large pool within a year."

"Despite the post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping of Americans, the NSA says that citizens should trust it not to abuse its growing power and that it takes the Constitution and the nation’s privacy laws seriously. But one of the agency’s biggest secrets is just how careless it is with that ocean of very private and very personal communications, much of it to and from Americans. Increasingly, obscure and questionable contractors — not government employees — install the taps, run the agency’s eavesdropping infrastructure, and do the listening and analysis."

"Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other Internet service providers (ISPs) in the United States will soon launch new programs to police their networks in an effort to catch digital pirates and stop illegal file-sharing. Major ISPs announced last summer that they had agreed to take new measures in an effort to prevent subscribers from illegally downloading copyrighted material, but the specifics surrounding the imminent antipiracy measures were not made available. Now, RIAA chief executive Cary Sherman has said that ISPs are ready to begin their efforts to curtail illegal movie, music and software downloads on July 12."

"The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments. As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is."

"It seems that while other operating system vendors can get away with one or two versions, Microsoft prefers to chop up its products in order to make them seem more impressive and try to rake in more cash. Microsoft is expected to release Windows 8 towards the tail end of 2012, with the consumer preview being used to generate interest for the operating system and let users find bugs for free."

"The disclosure was contained in e-mails from the private US security firm, Stratfor, which were published by WikiLeaks website on Monday after being obtained by the Anonymous hacking group. Stratfor provides analysis of world affairs to major corporations, military officials and government agencies and was once likened by an American business magazine to a "shadow CIA". According to one of the e-mails, the firm was shown the information papers collected from bin Laden's Abbotabad compound after the US special forces attack last May that resulted in his death. The e-mail, from a Stratfor analyst, suggested that up to 12 officials in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency knew of the al-Qaeda leader's safe house."

"Though to put it in perspective, the Pentagon is still spending more on classified projects than most nations spend on their entire military forces in year. And that’s just the beginning. The budget for the Military Intelligence Program was released this week, adding another $19.2 billion — down from a record $27 billion in 2010. That also doesn’t include the budget for the National Intelligence Program, which oversees spy agencies like the CIA. Their budget hasn’t been released yet but prior budgets have shown it to hover in the $50 billion range. So we could be talking about $120 billion or more in black accounts. There’s also a slight problem. The Pentagon has another “classified” budget line with the money to show for it, but the dollar-amounts don’t match the individual projects. In other words, the exact amount the Pentagon spends on its black projects may, in fact, be a mystery even to itself."

"In response a great deal of criticism and controversy, Reddit has decided to ban the posting of sexually suggestive or exploitive images of minors. After years of dealing with child pornography on a case-by-case basis, the social news site announced today that it would ban all subreddits that focus on the sexualization of children. Beyond obviously illegal content, the large amount of content in a legal grey area eventually convinced the site's administrators that its previous policy had "become unsustainable."

"Up until now, Windows 8 has straddled the gaps between its disparate platforms remarkably well, but this could seriously harm the operating system’s uptake. It’s not that the App Store model is morally evil, but that the Windows brand is going to be split between two families of devices. Microsoft might well have been better off calling its ARM effort “Windows Tablet” or even moving it to Windows Phone — WOA devices aren’t going to be Windows products in some of the ways the term has traditionally been applied. That’s not good for the brand, or for users, and it blurs one of the most important distinction between a device that’s essentially a toy and one that people can use for both work and creation. It’s possible that Microsoft will include the ability to load unapproved apps, similar to the way that unsigned drivers can be loaded in a 64-bit OS, but the company’s previous decision to force UEFI Secure Boot on ARM devices make this seem unlikely."

"Latin American leaders have joined together to condemn the U.S. government for soaring drug violence in their countries, blaming the United States for the transnational cartels that have grown rich and powerful smuggling dope north and guns south. At a regional summit this month in Mexico, attended by the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, officials declared that “the authorities in consumer countries should explore all possible alternatives to eliminate exorbitant profits of criminals, including regulatory or market options.” “Market options” is diplomatic code for decriminalization."

"The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015. Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well. “There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists."

"There’s a Zuckerbergian tone in Morin's apology where the company says it's sorry that you were offended, but falls short of admitting it violated anyone's privacy. The incentives for Path's actions were pretty high. Grabbing your contacts made it easier for Path to connect you to more people and thus entice you to keep using Path. There's nothing wrong with that idea in general -- you use a social network to connect with other people after all. But that doesn't excuse Path's decision to cast aside respect for its users by violating their privacy and nabbing their address book without their consent. Path's actions also speak to a larger problem with smartphone apps in general."

"President Barack Obama said on Thursday he was granting 10 U.S. states exemptions from parts of the "No Child Left Behind" education law, a signature initiative passed under President George W. Bush, was aimed at holding public schools accountable for improving student performance. But it has been heavily criticized by many parents, teachers and state government officials. The states to be granted waivers are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. The administration is also pledging to work closely with New Mexico, another state that has made a formal request for a waiver."

"At least four people were killed in the fighting Wednesday. The rebel fighters are simply no match for the army regulars. They have no military training. They're not physically fit. They're up against an army with artillery, tanks. Soon the Syrian army will begin to use air power as well. Many rebels say at this point there's no turning back. Too much damage has been done. Too much blood has been shed. They've been living under repression 40 years. They want to speak their minds with freedom, choose their own government. And they're willing to die to get there."

"Two things are missing from the current conversation. First, the recent debate all but ignores the broad arsenal of responses to copyright infringement already available to rights-holders, without SOPA. Second, the public has not been informed on how America's free trade negotiations have been used to circumvent the democratic process, accomplishing much of what SOPA was meant to do. This administration, like its predecessors, negotiates free trade agreements without public input or transparency. These agreements quietly ratchet up the international scope of copyright protection and the harshness of penalties for infringement, without public discussion of how these changes impact companies or users at home. One of these agreements was just signed in the EU, where it is belatedly raising political havoc, and another was negotiated last week- in Hollywood."

"Nokia is cutting 4,000 jobs and will end its manufacturing in Hungary, Mexico and its home nation of Finland as it moves its phone making to Asia, the company announced Wednesday. The Salo, Finland, factory, which is Nokia's oldest manufacturing plant, along with the affected facilities in Komarom, Hungary, and Reynosa, Mexico, won't be shut down entirely, Nokia said. Instead, the "three factories are planned to focus on smartphone customization, serving customers mainly in Europe and the Americas," Nokia said in a statement. "Device assembly is expected to be transferred to Nokia factories in Asia, where the majority of component suppliers are based."

"The new measure was mandated as part of Iran sanctions legislation that was passed by Congress and signed by the president Dec. 31. “I have determined that additional sanctions are warranted, particularly in light of the deceptive practices of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks to conceal transactions of sanctioned parties, the deficiencies in Iran’s anti-money laundering regime and the weaknesses in its implementation, and the continuing and unacceptable risk posed to the international financial system by Iran’s activities,” Obama said in his congressional notification."

"Not many people know that local police and the RCMP have already begun building a massive public traffic surveillance system. And no one knows how they’re going to use it. The A News reporter and Nanaimo constable interwove: “amazing,” “blown away,” “overwhelming.” “This will revolutionize the way we police,” proclaimed Vancouver police in The Province."

"To move into the ULP market, AMD is targeting x86 support at under two watts. "We can absolutely get x86 to less than 2 watts," Su promised. "So if you think about that, you can take the full Windows 8 capability into an x86 processor in a tablet system that lasts for over 30 days battery life. That is very much within the realm of our capability." Su pointed out that AMD will have plenty of both possible customers and competition in the tablet market. "There are a lot of players who are out there talking about tablets," she said, "and frankly, the volume isn't so high – except for the first one." And so AMD, along with its megacompetitor Intel, is crossing its fingers that Ballmer & Co. don't jump the shark with Windows 8."

"In January, oil prices in the U.S. rose about only 0.36 percent, with oil selling for $98.74 a barrel on Jan. 31, 1.04 percent less than a year ago. Despite the rise in oil prices, Shell reported fourth-quarter net income fell 4 percent to $6.5 billion. Chevron's fourth-quarter net also fell 4 percent to $5.1 billion. These mediocre results came as the U.S. increased its production of domestic hydrocarbons and actually became a net exporter of refined product for the first time since 1949, the EIA said, Moreover, with increased production such as the use of hydraulic fracturing to extract rich natural gas and oil deposits, the EIA predicts the U.S. is likely to maintain its increased production levels. "It has been an extraordinary year for natural gas," Brookings' Ebinger said. The EIA anticipates the U. S. and the Americas will continue being the leading non-OPEC members in crude production for several more years."

"Iran’s [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad recently returned from his ‘Tour of Tyrants’ trip to visit Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador. Media reports have indicated an increased presence of Iran’s Quds Force in these countries and offices of Iran’s intelligence services surfacing throughout the region," said Ros-Lehtinen. "The fact that the military arm of a state-sponsor of terrorism has its operatives within multiple countries in our hemisphere is certainly cause for alarm and merits congressional focus."

"OPEN "needs to be scrapped," the statement says. "Stakeholders and Congress need to start over with a fresh look at solving this problem." Of course, Congress just did "start over" after the RIAA and its allies tried to ram the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act through Congress. That effort sparked an unprecedented Internet backlash. While some of the RIAA's objections may have merit, we suspect the group's real problem with OPEN is precisely that the drafting situation was reversed this time: technology companies and the Internet community actually had a seat at the table when the bill was formulated. As a consequence, its provisions reflect a very different approach to the issue. In addition, SOPA and PIPA were not mentioned at all in the RIAA's statement. Apparently, those bills have become so politically toxic that even their leading supporters prefer "starting over" to reviving them... at least under their existing names."

"Wireless carrier US Cellular on Wednesday announced that its 4G LTE network will be up and running next month in six states. The March rollout will happen in select cities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma, including Milwaukee, Madison and Racine, Wis.; Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa; Portland and Bangor, Maine; and Greenville, N.C. The company's first LTE device will be the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE tablet, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S Aviator 4G LTE smartphone, which will hit stores sometime in April, US Cellular said."

"More than three-quarters of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds couldn’t serve in the military, even if they wanted to. They’re too fat, too sickly, too dumb, have too many kids, or have copped to using illegal drugs. The armed services are willing to grant waivers for some of those conditions – asthma, or a little bit of weed. But the military’s biggest concern is how big and how weak its potential recruits have become. “The major component of this is obesity,” Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, tells Army Times‘ William McMichael. “Kids are just not able to do push-ups… And they can’t do pull-ups. And they can’t run."

"The U.S. “wants to control everything” and takes decisions unilaterally on key questions, Putin said on a campaign stop yesterday in the Siberian city of Tomsk, 3,100 kilometers (1,900 miles) east of Moscow. “Sometimes I get the impression the U.S. doesn’t need allies, it needs vassals."

"The treaty, known as Acta, aims to establish international standards to enforce intellectual property rights. But critics say it could curb freedom of expression, and government websites have been hacked in protest. Several marches took place in cities across the nation on Wednesday, says the BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw. Crowds of mostly young people held banners with slogans such as "no to censorship" and "a free internet". After convening a special government meeting to discuss the issue, Mr Tusk said the government would not be blackmailed by the treaty's opponents. There would be ample time for public discussion about the treaty before it was ratified by the Polish parliament, he said."

"Newt Gingrich isn’t the only politician who’s freaked out by China and Russia’s online spying. But the new Republican presidential frontrunner may be the highest-profile political figure all but openly calling for cyberwar with Moscow and Beijing. “I think that we have to treat state-based covert activities as the equivalent of acts of war,” Gingrich said in response to a question about countries that target U.S. corporate and government information systems. “And I think that we have to respond to that and create a level of pain which teaches people not to do it."

"On Saturday’s edition of “Up With Chris Hayes,” Gary Johnson brought up an old Newt Gingrich idea I hadn’t heard before: Putting individuals who brought more than two ounces of marijuana into the United States to death. That sounded extreme, even for Gingrich. So I looked it up. And sure enough, there it is: “The Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996.” What makes the bill even more amazing is that Gingrich himself is a confessed pot smoker."

"Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:"

"Later today, Stephen Colbert will host a rally with Herman Cain in South Carolina. It’s part of his increasingly complicated involvement in his home state’s GOP primary. Colbert wants voters to back Cain as a way of supporting Colbert’s run for “president of the United States of South Carolina.” Write-in candidates aren’t allowed, hence the partnership with the one-time GOP front-runner, who qualified for the ballot before dropping out of the race amidst controversy. Who’s kidding who?"

"President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to slash spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war. The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world's most powerful military following the buildup that was a key part of President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe."

"Rejoice, all ye faithful! Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, will provide push-button Reset and Refresh in Windows 8. Reset will restore a Windows 8 PC to its stock, fresh-from-the-factory state; Refresh will reinstall Windows 8, but keep your documents and installed Metro apps in tact."

"CV Dazzle™ is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs. The name is derived from a type of camouflage used during WWI, called Dazzle, which was used to break apart the gestalt-image of warships, making it hard to discern their directionality, size, and orientation. Likewise, the goal of CV Dazzle is to break apart the gestalt of a face, or object, and make it undetectable to computer vision algorithms, in particular face detection. Because face detection is the first step in automated facial recognition, CV Dazzle can be used in any environment where automated face recognition systems are in use, such as Google's Picasa, Flickr, or Facebook."

"While the Food and Drug Administration monitors the safety and supply of the drugs, which are sold both as generics and under brand names like Ritalin and Adderall, the Drug Enforcement Administration sets manufacturing quotas that are designed to control supplies and thwart abuse. Every year, the D.E.A. accepts applications from manufacturers to make the drugs, analyzes how much was sold the previous year and then allots portions of the expected demand to various companies. How each manufacturer divides its quota among its own A.D.H.D. medicines — preparing some as high-priced brands and others as cheaper generics — is left up to the company."

"Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the argument that immunity closed the courts to the plaintiffs. Only the telecommunications companies are covered, she wrote, not the government. “The federal courts remain a forum to consider the constitutionality of the wiretapping scheme and other claims,” she wrote. In a separate ruling, the appeals court on Thursday allowed a separate case against the government to proceed, in which plaintiffs say that the National Security Agency engaged in “an unprecedented suspicionless general search,” diverting Internet traffic into secure rooms in AT&T facilities."

"The group targeted this particular Web site because "their customer base is comprised primarily of military and law enforcement affiliated individuals, who have for too long enjoyed purchasing tactical combat equipment from their slick and 'professional' looking website. We'll continue to have ourselves a merry LulzXmas at the expense of capitalist pigs, corrupt public officials and all those third parties who cater to the continued oligarchic elite worldwide," Anonymous said. "We are your secretaries, your janitors, your babysitters, your IT guys, your bus drivers, your maids, your hard-working, driven and determined fellow humans." SpecialForces.com remains online."