An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from Fox News: Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday. Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public — in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said. The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee fired off a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking why the DOJ and FBI agreed to the restrictive terms, including that the FBI would destroy the laptops after finishing the search. The immunity deals for Mills and Samuelson, made as part of the FBI’s probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state, apparently included a series of “side agreements” that were negotiated by Samuelson and Mills’ attorney Beth Wilkinson. The side deals were agreed to on June 10, less than a month before FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency would recommend no charges be brought against Clinton or her staff. Judiciary Committee aids told FoxNews.com that the destruction of the laptops is particularly troubling as it means that the computers could not be used as evidence in future legal proceedings, should new information or circumstances arise. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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FBI Agreed To Destroy Laptops of Clinton Aides With Immunity Deal, Sources Say
According to The New York Times, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has been hacked and a password-protected archive of his personal emails has been published by DC Leaks. The Verge reports: DC Leaks is the same site that first published emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, which many took as an explicit effort to influence the U.S. election process. Many experts in the U.S. intelligence apparatus have attributed that attack to the Russian government, although no public attribution has been made. Thus far, there’s no evidence tying Powell’s hack to Russia, and similar hacks have been carried out by mischievous teens without government affiliation. The immediate result of the hack has been political fallout for Powell himself. Last night, BuzzFeed News reported on an email in which Powell called Republican nominee Donald Trump a “national disgrace, ” and another in which he said the candidate was “in the process of destroying himself.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader cites an article on CSOOnline: A 132 GB database, containing the personal information on 93.4 million Mexican voters has finally been taken offline. The database sat exposed to the public for at least eight days after its discovery by researcher Chris Vickery, but originally went public in September 2015. Vickery, who works as a security researcher at Kromtech, discovered the MongoDB instance on April 14, but had difficulty tracking down the person or company responsible for placing the voter data on Amazon’s AWS. He first reached out to the U.S. State Department, as well as the Mexican Embassy, but had little success. The database contains all of the information that Mexican citizens need for their government-issued photo IDs that enable them to vote. Along with their municipality, and district information, the database records include the voter’s name, address, voter ID number, date of birth, the names of their parents, occupation, and more. Given that the database has been online since September 2015, it isn’t clear how many people have accessed the records. Additionally, the actual owner of the account hosting the data remains unknown. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Human-made satellites have long been able to harness the sun’s energy as it washes over them outside the protection of our atmosphere. But what if we could beam all that solar power down to Earth? The science fictional idea may be a reality sooner than you think. Read more… 
halfEvilTech writes As part of its 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change the definition of broadband by raising the minimum download speeds needed from 4Mbps to 25Mbps, and the minimum upload speed from 1Mbps to 3Mbps, which effectively triples the number of US households without broadband access. Currently, 6.3 percent of US households don’t have access to broadband under the previous 4Mpbs/1Mbps threshold, while another 13.1 percent don’t have access to broadband under the new 25Mbps downstream threshold. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
New submitter FarnsworthG writes A news story about the capture of a kidnapper mentioned that he was caught because a car dealer had secretly installed a GPS device on his car. Apparently this is becoming common for “buy-here-pay-here” dealers. The devices are sold by Spireon, among many others. Raises interesting privacy questions. FarnsworthG also points to this Jalopnik article condemning the practice, when it’s done without disclosure. The kidnapping itself, of Philadelphia nursing assistant Carlesha Freeland-Gaither, was captured by a surveillance camera. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
theodp writes “CNN reports that the U.S. government shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT Tuesday after lawmakers in the House and the Senate could not agree on a spending bill to fund the government. Federal employees who are considered essential will continue working. But employees deemed non-essential — close to 800, 000 — will be furloughed, and most of those are supposed to be out of their offices within four hours of the start of business Tuesday.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
mask.of.sanity writes “A backdoor has existed for at least seven months in a platform sold by OpenX, the self-described global leader of digital advertising which counts the New York Post, Coca Cola, Bloomberg and EA among its customers. The backdoor was contained within the official OpenX package and recently removed. Security researchers say it meant those who downloaded the compromised software could have provided attackers full access to their web sites.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.