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Friday, June 21, 2013

Stanford's Cookie Clearinghouse adds another layer of security to ...

Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society Launches "Cookie Clearinghouse" to Enable User Choice for Online Tracking

STANFORD, Calif., June 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School launched a new online privacy initiative today called the "Cookie Clearinghouse," which will empower Internet users to make informed choices about online privacy. The Cookie Clearinghouse is being spearheaded by Aleecia M. McDonald, the Director of Privacy at CIS.

Websites may place small files called "cookies" on an Internet user's machine, and some types of cookies can be used to collect information about the user without his or her consent. The Cookie Clearinghouse will develop and maintain an "allow list" and "block list" to help Internet users make privacy choices as they move through the Internet. The Clearinghouse will identify instances where tracking is being conducted without the user's consent, such as by third parties that the user never visited. To establish the "allow list" and "block list," the Cookie Clearinghouse is consulting with an advisory board that will include individuals from browser companies including Mozilla and Opera Software, academic privacy researchers, as well as individuals with expertise in small businesses and in European law, and the advisory board will continue to grow over time. The Clearinghouse will also offer the public an opportunity to comment. With this input, the Clearinghouse will develop an objective set of criteria for when to include a website's cookies on the lists. The Clearinghouse will create and maintain the lists. Browser developers will then be able to choose whether to incorporate the lists into the privacy options they offer to consumers. Company websites with cookies that have been included on the "block list" will be able to respond to the Clearinghouse to correct any mistakes in classification.

"Internet users are starting to understand that their online activities are closely monitored, often by companies they have never heard of before," said McDonald, "But Internet users currently don't have the tools they need to make online privacy choices. The Cookie Clearinghouse will create, maintain, and publish objective information. Web browser companies will be able to choose to adopt the lists we publish to provide new privacy options to their users."

The need for the Clearinghouse evolved out of an effort by CIS fellows called Do Not Track. Initially, Stanford's Do Not Track work raised consumer awareness about the way in which "tracking cookies" are used by websites--and by unaffiliated third parties--to compile extensive individual browsing histories that provide those companies with data about individual consumer behavior. This effort has since progressed to a global standards effort led by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C.) More recently, CIS researchers began a new effort to prevent companies from tracking without the user's consent. CIS student affiliate Jonathan Mayer wrote a software patch for use in Mozilla's Firefox browser that limits third-party tracking through cookies. Mayer's patch mimics existing functionality in the Safari browser, which already prevents tracking from websites users have not visited. While Do Not Track efforts continue into their third year, the Cookie Clearinghouse is a new opportunity to accelerate Internet users' ability to make effective online privacy choices.

For more details, please visit the Cookie Clearinghouse: http://cch.law.stanford.edu

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/21/stanford-mozilla-cookie-clearinghouse/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Julian Assange hints WikiLeaks might publish next Edward Snowden revelations

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is getting help from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Mr. Assange confirmed reports that WikiLeaks is helping Mr. Snowden?s effort to gain asylum in Iceland.

?We have been in contact with Snowden and have been helping him,? he said. ?I feel a great deal of personal sympathy with Mr. Snowden.?

Assange also implied that WikiLeaks may well publish future revelations that Snowden says are forthcoming. WikiLeaks is best known for making public vast amounts of classified information provided by US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is now in the midst of a court-martial for the largest leak of classified documents in US history.

RECOMMENDED: Six countries where Edward Snowden could get asylum

?As a matter of policy, we don?t speak about investigations or upcoming publications,? Assange repeated several times Wednesday, refusing to say whether he had spoken directly with Snowden. But, he hinted, ?significant material will be published in coming weeks.?

For his part, Assange is marking the one-year anniversary of being holed-up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in order to avoid questioning about alleged sexual offenses in Sweden. Rather than hampering his WikiLeaks work, he said, his self-imposed isolation means that he has nothing else to do but continue with the controversial whistle-blower organization?s efforts.

Assange was joined in the 90-minute phone conference by prominent whistle-blowers and their advocates, who are highly critical of the Obama administration?s crackdown on government leakers as well as its recently reported secret probing of the phone records of Associated Press journalists and a Fox News reporter.

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Snowden?s more recent revelation that the NSA has been collecting vast amounts of metadata on phone records and Internet use means the Obama administration has taken government spying on Americans further than any previous administration, said Daniel Ellsberg, who gave the top secret Pentagon Papers to the media in 1971 when Richard Nixon was president.

?President Obama has gone farther than any of the others in using the power of the government,? Mr. Ellsberg said. ?What?s new is not only prosecutions under the Espionage Act but criminalizing the process of investigative journalism.?

But Ellsberg also said he remains hopeful that the examples of Manning, Assange, and Snowden will prompt others to become leakers and whistle-blowers.

?This is our last chance, I think, to keep our press and thus our democracy from becoming like China?s or the Soviet Union,? he said.

For critics of domestic spying, FBI Director Robert Mueller?s congressional testimony Wednesday, acknowledging that his agency has been using surveillance drones over American soil, came as a matter of suspicions confirmed.

"I think the greatest threat to the privacy of Americans is the drone and the use of the drone and the very few regulations that are on it today and the booming industry of commercial drones,? CNN quotes Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California as saying. (Senator Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has defended the NSA?s electronic-surveillance program.) As reporters and government officials try to track down Snowden ? last located in a hotel in Hong Kong ? the debate over the benefits and dangers of the NSA?s surveillance programs continues.

In a USA Today interview earlier this week, three former NSA whistle-blowers ? Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe ? were said to ?feel vindicated? by Snowden?s revelations.

?They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who worked as a systems administrator, proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing,? USA Today reports. ?They say those revelations only hint at the programs' reach.? ?We are seeing the initial outlines and contours of a very systemic, very broad, a Leviathan surveillance state and much of it is in violation of the fundamental basis for our own country ? in fact, the very reason we even had our own American Revolution,? said Mr. Drake, a former NSA executive who was charged under the Espionage Act. (The most serious charges were dropped, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of misuse of a government computer.)

RECOMMENDED: Six countries where Edward Snowden could get asylum

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Top court to reveal if it will hear Rob Ford conflict appeal

The Supreme Court of Canada will reveal today if it will hear an appeal in a conflict of interest challenge that previously threatened to oust Toronto Mayor Rob Ford from office.

Toronto resident Paul Magder filed an application in an Ontario court last year, alleging that Ford had violated conflict of interest legislation when he participated in a council vote that absolved his need to pay back funds donated to his private football foundation.

The controversy had begun two years before the application was filed, when Toronto?s integrity commissioner recommended to council in August 2010 that Ford pay back the donations that had been improperly solicited on letterhead with official city markings. Council adopted her recommendations.

In January 2012, the integrity commissioner informed council that Ford had not provided proof of reimbursement. That preceded the vote that occurred days later, which resulted in council deciding to drop the issue and take no further action. Magder filed his application in March 2012.

In court, Ford would testify that he never read the legislation he was accused of violating, nor the materials that the city gives to its elected officials explaining their obligations in declaring conflicts.

In November of last year, a Superior Court justice found that Ford had violated conflict of interest rules and ordered the mayor removed from office.

Ford appealed the matter and a Divisional Court subsequently overturned the removal order in January.

But the day that Ford won the appeal, Clayton Ruby, the lawyer for the Toronto resident who filed the application, indicated that he would ask the Supreme Court of Canada to hear an appeal.

The top court is due to announce its decision on whether it will hear the appeal shortly before 10 a.m. ET.

Tumultuous tenure as mayor

Ford, who recently turned 44, was elected as the mayor of Canada?s most populous city in the fall of 2010.

His tenure has been marked by controversy at times, as he has clashed with councillors on key issues including labour, budget and transit files. Ford has advocated for lower taxes and a smaller municipal government, but has struggled to lead the council that surrounds him.

Ford has also made headlines for his driving, his behaviour out of the office and his intensive involvement with high school football.

Most recently, reports have emerged that Ford was recorded on video using crack cocaine.

Ford has denied the video's existence. He has also said he does not use crack cocaine, nor is he addicted to it.

The story about the alleged drug video has drawn attention around the world and has led to an increased media focus on his life and work at city hall.

Before he was elected mayor, Ford served as a city councillor in Etobicoke, the Toronto suburb where he lives with his family.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2013/06/19/toronto-mayor-rob-ford-supreme-court-appeal-conflict-decision-notice.html?cmp=rss

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Feedly launches cloud platform and new web interface ahead of Google Reader shutdown

The eventual demise of Google Reader gave existing services like Feedly an opportunity to land hundreds of thousands of new users, but the sudden gain of popularity demands an infrastructure that can handle the load. By opening its APIs to the masses today, Feedly says it's officially making the transition "from a product to a platform," supplying developers and RSS users alike with a painless migration path from Google's soon-to-be deceased reader. To go along with that, the company also announced a novel version of Feedly on the web, one which doesn't require any extensions or plugins and is accessible via browsers such as Internet Explorer and Opera.

As the image above shows, the freshly minted cloud platform already offers support for a slew of third-party applications, and Feedly says numerous other devs are currently working on their own for the near future. Now, if you didn't think Mountain View's recent spring cleaning could have a huge influence in such a short span of time, hear this: Feedly's touting that its user base has more than tripled since the announcement, making the jump from 4 to 12 million through the end of last month. Only time will tell if Feedly ends up being a worthy Reader replacement, so perhaps now would be the perfect instance to start deciding whether or not this will be the proper solution to all your RSS needs.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Feedly

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/YzQA52u-sn0/

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Fire blazes at Dutch firelighting block factory

AMSTERDAM (AP) ? Authorities in the Dutch city of Oisterwijk say a fire has broken out at a factory that makes firelighting blocks for barbecues and campfires.

The city of Oisterwijk, in the southeast of the Netherlands, said on its website that the fire is proving difficult to extinguish.

In an update mid-morning Thursday, the city said the fire was still burning ? or at least producing large volumes of smoke ? several hours after it began in the pre-dawn. "The fire is under control, but we cannot yet give the signal that we have mastered it," the statement said of the situation at the "Fire-up" factory.

No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is still under investigation, the city said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2013-06-20-Netherlands-Fire/id-29c931da9c994db58ce1be7369d12f9b

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Albino gorilla was inbred, say scientists

Albino gorilla:?A genetic study of Snowflake, the world's only known albino gorilla, found that he was likely the product of a pairing between an uncle and a niece.

By Eoin O'Carroll,?Staff / June 18, 2013

Snowflake, an albino gorilla from Equatorial Guinea, lived for almost 40 years at the Barcelona Zoo, where his complexion made him a star attraction.

Courtesy Institut de Biologia Evolutiva

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The most popular resident of the Barcelona Zoo likely had a mother who was also his first cousin. His maternal grandparent would therefore have been his aunt or uncle, so his paternal grandparents would have also been his maternal great-grandparents. And his offspring were his first cousins twice removed.?

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It's true: Snowflake,?an albino Western lowland?gorilla that lived in the Barcelona Zoo for almost 40 years, is the product of inbreeding, according to an analysis of the deceased primate's genome. ?

Snowflake was born in the wild and captured by villagers in Equatorial Guinea in 1966 when he was only a year or two old. He lived at the Barcelona Zoo, where?his milky complexion made him a main attraction, until his death in 2003 from skin cancer.

Using frozen blood samples, a team of 30 scientists led by Tomas Marques-Bonet of the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva at the University of Pompeu Fabra, sequenced Snowflake's genome.?

In the study, published in the current issue of the journal BMC Genomics, the researchers describe how they traced his albinism to a single gene ? called SLC45A2 ? that mediates the synthesis of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation in many animals, including mice, horses, tigers, some species of fish, and humans.?

"Finally, after so many years, it is a joy to explain why Snowflake was albino," said Dr. Marqu?s-Bonet, in a press release.

The researchers also found that Snowflake's parents shared 12.5 percent of their genes. After running computer simulations that took into account the influence of gender on the rates of genetic recombination, the researchers concluded that the gorilla was most likely the product of a pairing between an uncle and a niece, or possibly an aunt and a nephew.

Previous analyses of parentage of other members of Snowflake's species have not found inbreeding, suggesting that it is a rare behavior among Western lowland gorillas.?

When relatives mate, it increases the probability that two copies of any given gene will be derived from the same ancestor, and therefore will be identical. Albinism, an absence of a pigmentation chemical called melanin, is a recessive trait, meaning that it takes two of the genes for that trait for it to be expressed.?

Albinism is believed to affect all vertebrates. It affects about one in 17,000 humans, and is most prevalent among sub-Saharan populations.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/QSwDtyayyBo/Albino-gorilla-was-inbred-say-scientists

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The Kite-Borne Camera That Captured Post-Quake San Francisco in 1906

Drone photography is in the news this week, with protesters in Istanbul using unmanned cameras to document the events from above. Interestingly, the very first instance of remote aerial photography was devised to document an urban crisis, too: the 1906 earthquake that partially leveled San Francisco.