By the mercy of some higher power, the giant panda—an oversized mashup between a raccoon and a sloth whose offspring can’t shit on their own—is no longer endangered. At a meeting of the World Conservation Congress in Hawaii this weekend, experts took giant pandas off the IUCN’s official Red List, citing a population rebound in China. Read more…
Taken from:
Giant Pandas Are No Longer Endangered
Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Police do not need a warrant to obtain a person’s cellphone location data held by wireless carriers, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday, dealing a setback to privacy advocates. The full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company. The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court’s three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue. The decision arose from several armed robberies in Baltimore and Baltimore County, Maryland, in early 2011, leading to the convictions of Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan. The convictions were based in part on 221 days of cellphone data investigators obtained from wireless provider Sprint, which included about 29, 000 location records for the defendants, according to the appeals court opinion. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See more here:
US Court Says No Warrant Needed For Cellphone Location Data
James Comey, FBI director and encryption skeptic , hates that you can communicate privately and securely. Read more…
Link:
FBI Director Is Upset You Can Communicate Securely on WhatsApp
When video surfaced of a hoverboard in action a few weeks ago—not those ones that roll around on the ground, but a hoverboard that actually flies—there were plenty of YouTube comments questioning its authenticity. It is most definitely real, and its creator just set a world record for distance in a hoverboard flight. Read more…
Read more here:
This Hoverboard Actually Flies And It Just Set A World Record
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. House of Representatives has passed H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, sending it on to the Senate and from there, hopefully anyhow, to the President. The yeas were swift and unanimous. The bill, which was introduced in the House early last year and quickly found bipartisan support, updates the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, closing a loophole that allowed emails and other communications to be obtained without a warrant. It’s actually a good law, even if it is arriving a couple of decades late. “Under current law, there are more protections for a letter in a filing cabinet than an email on a server, ” said Congresswoman Suzan Delbene during the debate period. An earlier version of the bill also required that authorities disclose that warrant to the person it affected within 10 days, or 3 if the warrant related to a government entity. That clause was taken out in committee — something trade groups and some of the Representatives objected to as an unpleasant compromise. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Continue Reading:
House Passes Email Privacy Act, Requiring Warrants For Obtaining Emails
After revealing an ambitious plan for global expansion earlier this year , Netflix is now looking to focus on what’s arguably the most important part of its business: content. In a recent meeting at Mobile World Congress 2016 , the video giant shared more details about what subscribers should expect next. And that mostly revolves around making a bigger push for original shows, improving the Netflix mobile apps on iOS and Android, as well as bringing support for high dynamic range (HDR) programming. The company hasn’t been shy to divulge its appreciation for HDR, but it’s going all out on the technology in 2016. “We started exploring HDR content about one year ago, ” says Chris Jaffe, vice president of user interface innovation at Netflix, “it is the [obvious] next-level resolution in the playback experience.” Over the coming months, there will be many HDR shows available on the platform, including Marco Polo season one and the highly anticipated second season of Daredevil . But Jaffe knows it won’t be easy, particularly due to the amount of internet bandwidth required by this type of content. As such, he says, Netflix has already worked out various compression algorithms , which adjust the quality of the video based on its complexity and still serve it up at a high resolution. So long as you have 16-20 Mbps connection, the experience should suffer from a minimum buffering woes. Of course, Ultra HD content plays a major role in Netflix’s strategy too, and there are more than 600 hours of 4K programming expected to hit the streaming service in 2016. Additionally, Jaffe says Netflix is launching 30 shows this year, including new seasons for existing series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black , plus 10 original movies and a number of documentaries and exclusive content for kids . “[We have] 75 million members around the world; essentially that means 75 million different experiences, ” he says about the challenge Netflix faces to have something for everyone, from movies and TV shows to the algorithm used to recommend what you should watch. On the mobile side, Netflix is expected to rollout a revamped iOS app tomorrow, featuring support for Arabic and auto-play episodes. Later this year, both the iOS and Android applications will let also you manage your data usage, in case you have a cap on your smartphone or tablet plan and want to limit streams to a certain quality. Meanwhile, if you have a Chromecast, you can expect a second-screen experience for to arrive “shortly, ” which is going to give you access to IMDB-like metadata from your iOS or Android device. It’ll come in handy during those times when you don’t know who an actor is, or want to know what other movies they are in — the benefit here is you’re able to do it directly from the app. You have to give it to Netflix for its appetite to keep growing across the board, but you also have to ask yourself if it’s trying to do too much all at once. As always, however, only time will tell. For now, if you’re a Netflix buff , there’s no reason you shouldn’t be excited about the company’s plans for the near future. [Image credits: Netflix, Getty Images]
Read More:
Netflix is going all in on HDR and more original content
The fifth generation of mobile networks—or 5G for most of us—is still a little way off providing your phone with data. But at Mobile World Congress, Verizon has announced that it as least already testing the technology. Read more…
You no longer have to dread the day that a game developer shuts off its servers and renders your favorite title unplayable. As part of a series of DMCA copyright exemptions, the US Library of Congress has granted long-sought permission to disable authentication server requirements in games where a server’s shutdown will completely break the experience. Historians can even hack the consoles themselves, if necessary. This doesn’t allow you to tweak games where you’d only lose multiplayer modes, but it does mean that at least some aspects of a classic game will live on. Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation Source: Copyright.gov (PDF)
Read More:
Copyright exemption lets you modify old games to keep them running
A US district court has struck down an 11-year-old gag order imposed by the FBI on Nicolas Merrill , the former head of a small internet service provider. Originally issued in 2004, it forbade Merrill from revealing that he’d received a so-called national security letter (NSL), a warrantless demand for customer data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes about 300, 000 such letters have been sent since the Patriot Act was enacted in 2001, but the decision signals the first time that a gag order has been lifted. “Courts cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, simply cannot accept the Government’s assertions that disclosure would… create a (public) risk, ” said Judge Victor Marrero. With the Patriot Act, Congress handed the FBI, NSA and other agencies the authority to demand phone and email records — but not their contents — from service providers, email services or social networks like Facebook . All it had to do was write a letter, sans warrant, saying it needed the data for national security reasons. On top of that, it usually gagged companies from revealing they even received NSLs, saying such disclosure could hamper investigations. Merrill was the first person to challenge a gag order and never complied with the FBI’s original request for his customer’s information. Though his internet company ceased operations long ago, he created the Calyx Institute to inform the public about digital privacy and help other service providers build it into their products. In a Washington Post opinion piece, he said he the ongoing gag order had become a burden since he now speaks about privacy issues in public. Proud to announce that I have won in federal court AGAIN and that my 11yr old #NSL gag order has been struck down https://t.co/0CrvNh1Cau — Nicholas Merrill (@nickcalyx) September 14, 2015 Earlier this year, the White House said that NSL gag orders must be lifted after three years or the close of an investigation, whichever comes first. Unfortunately, the decision wasn’t applied retroactively, so the FBI kept Merrill muzzled, even though its case against his client ended prior to 2010. Merrill said the agency isn’t motivated by legitimate national security concerns, but rather “a desire to insulate (itself) from public criticism and oversight.” Earlier this year, Merrill was granted permission to inform his customer that he’d been targeted by the feds. Unless the government appeals within 90 days, he’ll soon be free to disclose exactly which records the FBI ordered him to give up. “I hope today’s victory will finally allow Americans to engage in an informed debate about proper the scope of the government’s warrantless surveillance powers, ” he said. [Image credit: Getty Images] Filed under: Science Comments Via: The Intercept Source: US District Court , Nicholas Merrill (Twitter) Tags: FBI, GagOrder, NationalSecurityLetter, NicholasMerrill, NSL, privacy
View original post here:
ISP wins 11-year battle to reveal warrantless FBI spying
The FBI is investigating whether Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email compromised national security . And now the staffer who set it up is planning to stay silent during questioning to avoid incriminating himself. Read more…
Visit site:
Subpoenaed Clinton Staffer Will Plead the Fifth Over Email Scandal Questions