HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports in the NY Times that the United States Postal Service says it approved nearly 50, 000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations, in many cases without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization. In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests. The surveillance program, officially called mail covers, is more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful investigative tool. The Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100, 000 requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an average of some 8, 000 requests a year — far fewer than the nearly 50, 000 requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit (PDF). In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county’s sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. Wilcox sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. Andrew Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. “I don’t blame the Postal Service, ” says Wilcox, “but you shouldn’t be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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US Post Office Increases Secret Tracking of Mail
If your smoke alarm starts wailing and you’re not home to hear it, you’d better hope one of your neighbors does — or else you might come home to a smoldering pile of rubble. But with the Leeo smart night light, even if your nearest neighbor is miles away, you’ll be alerted to potential fires as soon as the alarm goes off. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes with this report from The Verge linking to and excerpting from a newly released report created for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including portions of eight “damning emails” that offer an unflattering look at the rollout of the Obamacare website. The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, “Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout, ” the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. “Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks, ” the report says. “There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view.” Writes the submitter: “The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. This is both both a coverup and incompetence.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Since 2011, Honolulu’s been busy building a $5.2 billion solution to help alleviate the mind-blowing traffic congestion that’s come to define life on Oahu’s South Shore. The Honolulu Rail Transit Project is a 20-mile, 21-station elevated train—and it will be the first completely driverless rail system in the U.S. Read more… 
Parking sucks, and that’s why there are plenty of apps to help your car find a vacant spot. Trouble is, those solutions tend to require expensive sensors to be installed in each and every one of those potentially open spots. A new app called PocketParker instead leverages the power of passive, portable sensors—the ones already installed your smartphone. Read more… 
With over 8 hours of battery life and a legitimate Haswell processor, the Acer C720 is one of the best bets in the Chromebook space, and you can get a refurb right now for an eminently reasonable $117 . Read more… 
schwit1 (797399) writes The U.S. Air Force on Thursday issued a request for information from industry for the replacement of the Russian-made engines used by ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket: “Companies are being asked to respond by Sept. 19 to 35 questions. Among them: “What solution would you recommend to replace the capability currently provided by the RD-180 engine?” Air Force officials have told Congress they only have a broad idea of how to replace the RD-180. Estimates of the investment in money and time necessary to field an American-built alternative vary widely. Congress, meanwhile, is preparing bills that would fund a full-scale engine development program starting next year; the White House is advocating a more deliberate approach that begins with an examination of applicable technologies. In the request for information, the Air Force says it is open to a variety of options including an RD-180 facsimile, a new design, and alternative configurations featuring multiple engines, and even a brand new rocket. The Air Force is also trying to decide on the best acquisition approach. Options include a traditional acquisition or a shared investment as part of a public-private partnership. [emphasis mine]” The Atlas 5 is built by Lockheed Martin. This is really their problem, not the Air Force or ULA. In addition, the Air Force has other options, both from Boeing’s Delta rocket family as well as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Scientists already know how to make a tasty tomato , but in the quest for mass production, there’s another barrier to overcome: how to make a tomato that grows 24 hours a day. Read more…