Tag: congress

Privacy-focused Blackphone 2 is ready for pre-order

Blackphone 2, the second iteration of Silent Circle’s privacy-focused handset, is now available for pre-order — assuming you don’t mind reserving a device without knowing its price. The original Blackphone was sold at the flagship-level cost of $629, but remember, this one’s more sophisticated than its predecessor, with its front and rear covered in glass. It has a 5.5-inch 1080p display, and inside, it boasts an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. What makes it different from other phones with similar specs, though, is that it runs an Android-based platform called PrivatOS which includes a suite of secure apps, including ones for encrypted messaging and voice calls. We saw Blackphone 2 at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, and we have a preview you can read to know a bit more before you pre-order a unit. The device is expected to arrive sometime in September — if you’d rather get the the Blackphone+ tablet, though, you’ll have to wait a bit more, since Silent Circle hasn’t revealed when that one will be available. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Silent Circle Tags: blackphone2, mobilepostcross, silentcircle

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Privacy-focused Blackphone 2 is ready for pre-order

Spooks Keep Finding Classified Information in Hillary’s Private Emails

Hillary Clinton’s email scandal isn’t going away any time soon. The Associated Press is now reporting that the intelligence community found classified information in two of the 40 randomly selected emails from the 30, 000 that Clinton handed over to investigators. Think about those numbers. Read more…

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Spooks Keep Finding Classified Information in Hillary’s Private Emails

Section 215 of the Patriot Act Expires—For Now

Section 215 has expired. At least for now. The law that the NSA used to authorize its collection of vast amounts of information about the telephone calls of ordinary Americans is no more. Even though it’s likely temporary, it’s a good thing and we should pause to celebrate a little. The calls and emails Congress received from people across the country and across the political spectrum changed the debate. Read more…

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Section 215 of the Patriot Act Expires—For Now

IT Worker’s Lawsuit Accuses Tata of Discrimination

dcblogs writes An IT worker is accusing Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of discriminating against American workers and favoring “South Asians” in hiring and promotion. It’s backing up its complaint, in part, with numbers. The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in San Francisco, claims that 95% of the 14, 000 people Tata employs in the U.S. are South Asian or mostly Indian. It says this practice has created a “grossly disproportionate workforce.” India-based Tata achieves its “discriminatory goals” in at least three ways, the lawsuit alleges. First, the company hires large numbers of H-1B workers. Over from 2011 to 2013, Tata sponsored nearly 21, 000 new H-1B visas, all primarily Indian workers, according to the lawsuit’s count. Second, when Tata hires locally, “such persons are still disproportionately South Asian, ” and, third, for the “relatively few non-South Asians workers that Tata hires, ” it disfavors them in placement, promotion and termination decisions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IT Worker’s Lawsuit Accuses Tata of Discrimination

Why Gas Is Priced in Tenths of Cents

The practice of pricing fuel with a fraction of a penny is thought to have started around the 1930s. While we can’t be sure who was the first to price fuel this way, it seems to have become relatively commonplace across the United States all the sudden around the same time. So what happened? In short- taxes and the Great Depression. Read more…

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Why Gas Is Priced in Tenths of Cents

Android 5.0 Devices Aren’t Encrypted By Default—Despite Google Promises

When Android 5.0 Lollipop launched, Google proudly claimed that full-disk encryption was a standard feature , enabled by default. But now phones with the OS are starting to appear in the wild, that appears not to be the case. Read more…

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Android 5.0 Devices Aren’t Encrypted By Default—Despite Google Promises

Republicans Back Down, FCC To Enforce Net Neutrality Rules

An anonymous reader writes: Republican resistance has ended for the FCC’s plans to regulate the internet as a public utility. FCC commissioners are working out the final details, and they’re expected to approve the plan themselves on Thursday. “The F.C.C. plan would let the agency regulate Internet access as if it is a public good…. In addition, it would ban the intentional slowing of the Internet for companies that refuse to pay broadband providers. The plan would also give the F.C.C. the power to step in if unforeseen impediments are thrown up by the handful of giant companies that run many of the country’s broadband and wireless networks.” Dave Steer of the Mozilla Foundation said, “We’ve been outspent, outlobbied. We were going up against the second-biggest corporate lobby in D.C., and it looks like we’ve won.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Republicans Back Down, FCC To Enforce Net Neutrality Rules

Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes

mi writes At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside. The device the Marshals Service and others are using, known as the Range-R, looks like a sophisticated stud-finder. Its display shows whether it has detected movement on the other side of a wall and, if so, how far away it is — but it does not show a picture of what’s happening inside. The Range-R’s maker, L-3 Communications, estimates it has sold about 200 devices to 50 law enforcement agencies at a cost of about $6, 000 each. Other radar devices have far more advanced capabilities, including three-dimensional displays of where people are located inside a building, according to marketing materials from their manufacturers. One is capable of being mounted on a drone. And the Justice Department has funded research to develop systems that can map the interiors of buildings and locate the people within them. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes

Download This Free Tool to See If the Government’s Spying on You

It’s been over a year-and-a-half since documents leaked by Edward Snowden shook our sense of privacy to the core . Those documents proved that government is spying on us pretty much all the time. And now that we know Congress isn’t going to do anything about it right away, it’s time to find the tools to protect yourself. Detekt is a good one . Read more…

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Download This Free Tool to See If the Government’s Spying on You