White House Website Includes Unique Non-Cookie Tracker, Conflicts With Privacy Policy. Yesterday, ProPublica reported on new research by a team at KU Leuven and Princeton oncanvas fingerprinting.
One of the most intrusive users of the technology is a company called AddThis, who by are employing it in “shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.com.” Canvas fingerprinting allows sites to get even more identifying information than we had previously warned about with our Panopticlick fingerprinting experiment. Canvas fingerprinting exploits the fact that different browsers have slightly different algorithms, parameters, and hardware for turning text into pictures on your screen (or more specifically, into an HTML 5 canvas object that the tracker can read). According to theresearch by Gunes Acar, et al. ,AddThis draws a hidden image containing the unusual phrase “Cwm fjordbank glyphs vext quiz” and observed the way the pixels would turn out differently on different systems.
The White House is far from alone. Why Putin Turned Against the U.S. - David A. Graham. Former ambassador Michael McFaul on what really motivated Russia to invade Ukraine Reuters ASPEN, Colo.
—One major divide in international relations, as well as in other social sciences, is between those who believe in structure and those who believe in agency. Members of the first group say leaders are just representations of cultures and nations, subject to long-running political dynamics; their counterparts insist, no, individual leaders make decisions that can change the course of history. Discussing whether Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine herald a new or resurrected Cold War between Washington and Moscow, former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul placed himself firmly in the agency camp: He thinks the current crisis is a direct result of Putin's actions and personality.
US Homeland Security must disclose ‘internet kill switch’, court rules. A US court has given the government 30 days to come up with a decent reason not to disclose its plan for a so-called internet kill switch.
Standard Operating Procedure 303 describes a shutdown and restoration process for wireless networks in the event of a national crisis that would prevent, among other things, the remote triggering of radio-activated explosives. Why America Has a Mass Incarceration Problem, and Why Germany and the Netherlands Don't - Mike Riggs - The Atlantic Cities. To understand America's epidemic of over-incarceration, it helps to look to countries that don't having our problem.
In Germany and the Netherlands, for example, incarceration rates per capita are nearly 90 percent lower than in the U.S.: 79 per 100,000 residents in Germany and 82 per 100,000 residents in the Netherlands, compared to 716 per 100,000 residents in the United States. As those numbers suggest, Germany and the Netherlands do things a bit differently. A recent report [PDF] from the Vera Institute of Justice explains that the differences are both philosophical and practical. "Resocialization" and rehabilitation are central to the Dutch and German models, whereas the American model focuses on retribution and isolation from society.
Paranoia Has Undermined United States Claim to Liberal Democracy. Agent Carrie Mathison is a topical figure.
The main character in the American TV series "Homeland," played by the wonderful Claire Danes, shows her true relevance in the first few episodes, in which Mathison is nervously sitting at home, observing and listening in on the life of a terror suspect on a large screen. His apartment is bugged and Mathison is determined to find out as much as she can about him. She is hysterical, bipolar, paranoid and sick -- all advantageous traits for her job. The real-life intelligence services of the United States take things much further than agent Carrie Mathison. They spy on just about anyone, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, so far, has not been suspected of maintaining ties to Islamist terrorism, and yet whose cellphone was tapped. It is often assumed that intelligence agencies are worlds of their own, and that they sometimes act on their own authority.
Paradise of Freedom? Politics Shaped by Fear.
White House. Outgoing US Official Warns of 'Major Cyber Event' WASHINGTON - Outgoing US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday warned of a "major cyber event" in the future that would have a "serious" impact on American society.
In what she described as "a kind of open letter to my successor," Napolitano warned of terrorist threats, major weather events and the need to reinforce US border security. "Our country will, for example, at some point, face a major cyber event that will have a serious effect on our lives, our economy, and the everyday functioning of our society," she said. The administration has yet to name a successor for Napolitano, who resigned in July and will leave office next month after more than four years as the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Created after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the department plays a key role, not only in guarding borders and preventing terror attacks, but also in the response to natural disasters.
US states banned from exporting their trash to China are drowning in plastic. Being green is getting a lot harder for eco-friendly states in the US, thanks to the country’s dependency on overrun Chinese recycling facilities.
Recycling centers in Oregon recently stopped accepting clear plastic “clamshell” containers used for berries, plastic hospital gowns and plastic bags, as the Ashland Daily Tidings reports. Yogurt and butter tubs are probably next. In Olympia, Washington, recycling centers are no longer accepting plastic bags. California’s farmers are grappling with what to do with the 50,000 to 75,000 tons of plastic they use each year. “The problem is we don’t have a market for it,” Jeff Hardwood, an Olympia-area recycling center manager, tells Washington state’s KIRO-TV.
Microsoft Is Working On a Cloud Operating System For the US Government. US Gov't To Issue Secure Online IDs. Pity the Poor Congressman: 'I'm Stuck Here Making $172,000 a Year' - Alex Seitz-Wald. How Anthony Weiner Exposed the Insecurities of the 1960s Generation - Richard Goldstein.