When The Intercept revealed mass NSA “full-take” call recording in the Bahamas and other nations, it declined to name another, sensitive country, citing US concerns about violence. Now Wikileaks has claimed that the nation in question is Afghanistan and said the NSA is bluffing about any possible danger to folks there. In the Wikileaks blog, Julian Assange said that the US has made such statements before and it has never seen any evidence of increased violence following leaks. On the other hand, it’s easy to see why the US government wouldn’t want such information public, given its war against terrorists in Afghanistan. But Assange countered that the press has no obligation to protect a country like the US if it engages in “ongoing crimes” against an entire nation. He added that’s especially true when such calls are sometimes used to target drone strikes, which often kill innocent civilians. The US government has yet to comment on the matter. Filed under: Misc Comments Source: Wikileaks
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Wikileaks: US government recording every call from Afghanistan
Despite the billions upon billions of dollars funneled into the hungry maw of the military over the past 70 years, some technology has remained the same since World War II—including the smoke grenade. Now, the Army is choosing a new version that, in theory, will be slightly less toxic than the “classic” model. Read more… 
Microsoft has won the right to disclose the FBI’s demand for information about Office 365 customer—a pretty significant victory for transparency and free speech. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes “A biotech start-up from Massachusetts has an unusual product: a bottle full of bacteria you’re supposed to spray onto your face. The bacteria is Nitrosomonas eutropha, and it’s generally harmless. Its main use is that it oxidizes ammonia, and the start-up’s researchers suspect it used to commonly live on human skin before we began washing it away with soaps and other cleaners. Such bacteria are an area of heavy research in biology right now. Scientists know that the gut microbiome is important to proper digestion, and they’re trying to figure out if an external microbiome can be similarly beneficial to skin. A journalist for the NY Times volunteered to test the product, which involved four straight weeks of no showers, no soap, no shampoo, and no deodorant. The sprayed-on bacteria quickly colonized her skin, along with other known types of bacteria — and hundreds of unknown (but apparently harmless) strains. She reported improvements to her skin and complexion, and described how the bacteria worked to curtail (but not eliminate) the body odor caused by not washing. At the end of the experiment, all of the N. eutropha vanished within three showers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
