10 years and $900M later, the TSA’s behavioral analysis program is a debacle . Here’s the US General Accountability Office on the program : “Ten years after the development of the SPOT program, TSA cannot demonstrate the effectiveness of its behavior detection activities. Until TSA can provide scientifically validated evidence demonstrating that behavioral indicators can be used to identify passengers who may pose threat to aviation security, the agency risks funding activities [that] have not been determined to be effective.” Basically, the TSA has spent a decade and nearly a billion dollars reinventing phrenology. I feel safer already. For the report, GAO auditors looked at the outside scientific literature, speaking to behavioral researchers and examining meta-analyses of 400 separate academic studies on unmasking liars. That literature suggests that “the ability of human observers to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral cues or indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance (54 percent).” That result holds whether or not the observer is a member of law enforcement. It turns out that all of those signs you instinctively “know” to indicate deception usually don’t. Lack of eye contact for instance simply does not correlate with deception when examined in empirical studies. Nor do increases in body movements such as tapping fingers or toes; the literature shows that people’s movements actually decrease when lying. A 2008 study for the Department of Defense found that “no compelling evidence exists to support remote observation of physiological signals that may indicate fear or nervousness in an operational scenario by human observers.” TSA’s got 94 signs to ID terrorists, but they’re unproven by science [Nate Anderson/Ars Technica]
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TSA blows a billion bucks on unscientific "behavioral detection" program, reinvents phrenology
An anonymous “US intelligence source” told a German newspaper that Obama had been briefed on the fact that the NSA had tapped German chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone in 2010, and that he’d personally let it go. Expect a lot more of this, as spooks who are sick of being kicked around for conducting the spying that high-ranking administration officials had been delighted to green-light start to whisper the names of their collaborators in government. Bild am Sonntag newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying that National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander had briefed Obama on the operation against Merkel in 2010. “Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,” the newspaper quoted a high-ranking NSA official as saying. News weekly Der Spiegel reported that leaked NSA documents showed that Merkel’s phone had appeared on a list of spying targets since 2002, and was still under surveillance shortly before Obama visited Berlin in June. Obama aware of Merkel spying since 2010: German media [Deborah Cole/AFP] ( via /. ) 
Research from UC Berkeley’s Kater Murch and team has allowed fine observation of a quantum waveform collapse. Observing single quantum trajectories of a superconducting quantum bit , published in Nature , describes the experiment, which used indirect observations of microwaves that had passed through a box containing a circuit where a particle was in a state of superposition, allowing the researchers to view the collapse in slow-motion. 
It’s a sad day: the photoshopping remix site Worth1000 is shutting its doors , victim of being “technologically orphaned” after refactoring its codebase and then losing its programmer. 
The NSA is to cut 90% of its 1, 000 sysadmins in a bid to reduce the risk of leaks. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a network administrator, charged with keeping the machines running on the network of vast data-centers used by the NSA to harvest, store and analyze unimaginably large quantities of data. 
In Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents , a computer scientist called David Kriesel shows that the Xerox WorkCentre 7535 randomly changes the numbers in its scans. 
Kwikset makes an incredibly popular line of reprogrammable locks that can be easily re-keyed, meaning that landlords don’t have to physically change the locks when their tenants move out.