Skip to main content

Home/ Indie Nation/ Group items tagged mention

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
John Lemke

NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...a-cia-fbi-laptop-usb-plant-spy

2013 nsa spy malware yourrights surveillance spying law legal government

shared by John Lemke on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • According to a new report from Der Spiegel based on internal NSA documents, the signals intelligence agency's elite hacking unit (TAO) is able to conduct sophisticated wiretaps in ways that make Hollywood fantasy look more like reality. The report indicates that the NSA, in collaboration with the CIA and FBI, routinely and secretly intercepts shipping deliveries for laptops or other computer accessories in order to implant bugs before they reach their destinations. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA's TAO group is able to divert shipping deliveries to its own "secret workshops" in a method called interdiction, where agents load malware onto the electronics or install malicious hardware that can give US intelligence agencies remote access. While the report does not indicate the scope of the program, or who the NSA is targeting with such wiretaps, it's a unique look at the agency's collaborative efforts with the broader intelligence community to gain hard access to communications equipment. One of the products the NSA appears to use to compromise target electronics is codenamed COTTONMOUTH, and has been available since 2009; it's a USB "hardware implant" that secretly provides the NSA with remote access to the compromised machine.
  • The Der Spiegel report, which gives a broad look at TAO operations, also highlights the NSA's cooperation with other intelligence agencies to conduct Hollywood-style raids. Unlike most of the NSA's operations which allow for remote access to targets, Der Spiegel notes that the TAO's programs often require physical access to targets. To gain physical access, the NSA reportedly works with the CIA and FBI on sensitive missions that sometimes include flying NSA agents on FBI jets to plant wiretaps. "This gets them to their destination at the right time and can help them to disappear again undetected after even as little as a half hour's work," the report notes.
  • John Lemke on 30 Dec 13
     
    While the scope or the targets are reportedly not known, the article also does not mention anything about a search warrant. This is what happens when the government feels they are above the law.
John Lemke

Western Union Gets A Patent On An Exchange For 'Alternative Currencies' | Techdirt - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...e-alternative-currencies.shtml

patent currencies alternative western union 2014 indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 08 May 14 - No Cached
  • nearly a year after the original Bitcoin paper -- it was before people were really talking about Bitcoin. So the filing doesn't mention Bitcoin, but does mention many of the more popular digital currencies that came before it
  • exchanging currencies is not a particularly new idea
John Lemke

Beyond The Dawn - 0 views

paper.li/1293994884

mention

shared by John Lemke on 09 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Twitter Directory and Search, Find Twitter Followers : WeFollow wefollow.com - Find Twitter celebrities, actors, TV personalities, or new Twitter friends in your area. WeFollow is a directory of Twitter users organized by interests. Find likeminded friends today! davehennmusic davehennmusic Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com twitter directory under: #chicago_il #music #indie #songwriting #chicago #musician about 2 hours ago Reply Retweet Follow Unfollow Favorite Suicide Silence | Indienation.fm indienation.fm - At the RockStar Energy Mayhem Festival it was my great pleasure to sit down with Mark Heylmun the guitarist from Suicide Silence. If you have yet to hear their music, Suicide Silence performs an ex...
  • Suicide Silence | Indienation.fm indienation.fm - At the RockStar Energy Mayhem Festival it was my great pleasure to sit down with Mark Heylmun the guitarist from Suicide Silence. If you have yet to hear their music, Suicide Silence performs an ex...
John Lemke

Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female | Tor... - 0 views

www.tor.com/...e-viking-warriors-proof-swords

identification viking warriors female 2014 indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 04 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.
  • I'm a historian who studies burial in the early middle ages, and the burial of women with weapons is one of my specialties! I'm in the process of publishing research about a woman buried with a spear in the 6th century, and am excited to see this important topic being discussed here outside the ivory tower at Tor.com.
  • The key thing to note is the word 'settlers': the article is arguing that women migrated from Scandinavia to England with the invading Viking army in the 9th century. Several of these women, the article notes, were buried with weapons, but they are still far outnumbered by the armed men. Most of the women settlers mentioned in the study were buried with 'traditional' female outfits: brooches that held up their aprons.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Archaeologists have been using bones to identify the biological sex of skeletons for the past century, but when burials were found which didn't fit their notions of 'normal,' they tended to assume that the bone analysts had made a mistake. This is not entirely unreasonable, because bones are often so badly decomposed that it is impossible to tell the sex of the person. But I can point to cases where the bones clearly belong to a woman, and the archaeologists insisted that it had to be a man because only men were warriors. That's modern sexism plain and simple, and bad archaeology. But thankfully, archaeologists in recent decades have become aware of this problem, and as a result, more and more women are showing up with weapons!
  • But women with weapons are still a minority, usually fewer than 10% at any given cemetery.
  • First, we're just talking about graves (because that's what survives for archaeologists to dig up). Just because a woman is buried in an apron, does not mean she wasn't a warrior before she died. There was no rule (as far as we know) that warriors had to be buried with their weapons.
  • Second, we can't be sure that everyone buried with a weapon was a warrior. We find infants buried with weapons sometimes; they clearly weren't fighters (though perhaps they would have been had they grown up?). Weapons were powerful ritual objects with lots of magic and social power, and a woman might be buried with one for a reason other than fighting, such as her connection to the ruling family, ownership of land, or role as priestess or magical healer.
1 - 4 of 4
Showing 20▼ items per page