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Activist group sues San Diego Police Department over “stingray” records

A legal advocacy group has sued the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) and the city of San Diego in an attempt to force the release of public records relating to stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators. Stingrays are often used covertly by local and federal law enforcement to locate target cellphones and their respective owners. However, stingrays also sweep up cell data of innocent people nearby who have no idea that such collection is taking place. Stingrays can be used to intercept voice calls and text messages as well. Earlier this week, a local judge in Arizona ruled that a local reporter could not receive similar stingray documents from the Tucson Police Department because disclosure “would give criminals a road map for how to defeat the device, which is used not only by Tucson but other local and national police agencies.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Activist group sues San Diego Police Department over “stingray” records

AnandTech snapped up by parent company of Tom’s Hardware and LaptopMag

Purch, Inc. announced on Wednesday that it had purchased AnandTech.com, ending the site’s 17-year run as an independent publication. Purch also owns a number of other long-running technology sites, including LaptopMag (founded as Laptop Magazine in 1991), Tom’s Hardware (founded 1996), and a handful of other offshoot tech publications. Purch says the acquisition will help it “dominate the tech expert and enthusiast market.” Anand Shimpi, founder and original editor-in-chief of the site, left his post for Apple in late August. Shimpi says he is “happy to see [AnandTech] end up with a partner committed to taking good care of the brand and its readers.” Current Editor-In-Chief Ryan Smith says the site has “grown by leaps and bounds over the past several years” but that it was “nearing what’s possible as an independent company.” Smith goes on to say that Purch values AnandTech’s exhaustive hardware testing and reviews, and that Purch would enable the site to grow “without compromising the quality that made us who we are today.” Under Smith, AnandTech has continued to run reviews of individual PC components and, less frequently, complete consumer products like laptops, phones, and operating systems. While the site misses Shimpi’s voice and expertise (and that of former mobile editor Brian Klug, who also left for Apple this year), its coverage and testing procedures continue to be deep and thorough, and they will hopefully remain that way post-acquisition. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

FCC expected to fine Sprint $105 million for overcharging customers

The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly on the verge of fining Sprint $105 million for cramming charges that brought complaints from tens of thousands of customers. The $105 million fine would match one levied on AT&T , which was accused of the same illegal practice. The US government has also sued T-Mobile over cramming charges. The FCC has not confirmed the action against Sprint, but it was reported Monday in the National Journal and yesterday in The Wall Street Journal . “According to the enforcement action, which hasn’t been finalized, Sprint billed customers for third-party services it knew they hadn’t asked for and didn’t want,” National Journal wrote. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras

OAKLAND, Calif.—Over the last two years, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has disciplined police officers on 24 occasions for disabling or failing to activate body-worn cameras, newly released public records show. The City of Oakland did not provide any records prior to 2013, and the OPD did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. The records show that on November 8, 2013 one officer was terminated after failing to activate his camera. Less than two weeks later, another resigned for improperly removing the camera from his or her uniform. However, most officers received minor discipline in comparison. The OPD has used Portable Digital Recording Devices (PDRDs) since late 2010 . According to the department’s own policy , patrol officers are required to wear the cameras during a number of outlined situations, including detentions, arrests, and serving a warrant. At present, the city has about 700 officers . Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Oakland cops disciplined 24 times for failing to turn on body-worn cameras

4 seconds of body cam video can reveal a biometric fingerprint, study says

Researchers say they can have computers examine body camera video footage and accurately identify a person wearing a body-mounted device in about four seconds, according to a recently released paper . The authors of the study had their software look at biometric characteristics like height, stride length, and walking speed to find the identity of the person shooting the footage. As they point out, this could have both positive and negative implications for civilians, law enforcement, and military personnel if they’re using body-mounted cameras. (It’s important to note that this research paper, Egocentric Video Biometrics , was posted to the arXiv repository . As such, it’s not considered a final, peer-reviewed work.) Using static, mounted cameras to match a person’s height and gait is a relatively common and well-researched vector for narrowing down the identity of people caught in videos. The authors said that, to get an accurate read of the biometric data of the person wearing the body cam, the footage has to be from a camera secured to one point on a person’s body (handheld cameras don’t work), and it has to have at least four seconds of video of the camera-wearer walking. Despite these restrictions, the two researchers from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem noted that once the necessary information had been gathered, “the identity of the user can be determined quite reliably from a few seconds of video.” “This is like a fingerprint,” Shmuel Peleg, one of the paper’s authors, told The Verge. “In order to find the person you have to have their fingerprint beforehand. But we can compare two people and say whether two videos were shot by the same person or not.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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4 seconds of body cam video can reveal a biometric fingerprint, study says

Steam’s first “Holiday Auction” halted after dupe bug ruins market [Updated]

Update: Valve has updated its auction site to note that the Gem auctions will return “shortly” and that “an issue with Gems… means we need to reset and start again.” Specifically: All gems created by you will be returned to your Inventory. All Gem purchases from the Community Market will be reimbursed. All Auction bids have been canceled and the Auction will be reset. Trades involving Gems are being investigated on a case-by-case basis. Original Story The virtual “Holiday Auction” Steam first announced yesterday evening seemed like a cute idea at the time. For a limited time, users would be able to trade in unused or unwanted Steam Inventory items for “gems,” which could in turn, starting Monday, be used to bid against others on codes for 2,000 Steam games, 200,000 copies in all. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Steam’s first “Holiday Auction” halted after dupe bug ruins market [Updated]

Microsoft withdraws bad Windows 7 update that broke future Windows 7 updates

One of this week’s Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 7 has been withdrawn after some users discovered that it blocked installation of software containing digital signatures, including first- and third-party software, and even other Windows updates. The problem update is called KB3004394. The purpose of this update was to change how Windows updates its collection of root certificates used to authenticate SSL and TLS connections. Without the update, Windows is meant to poll for certificate updates once a week. With the update, this frequency is increased to once a day. Unfortunately, this apparently simple change has had severe consequences for some users of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, with users reporting that Windows Update, drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD, as well as some third-party software including Virtual Box are all unable to install correctly. The error code 0x8004FF91 seems to be a common finding. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft withdraws bad Windows 7 update that broke future Windows 7 updates

Comcast sued by customers for turning routers into public hotspots

A pair of Comcast customers has sued the company for turning Xfinity Internet routers into public Wi-Fi hotspots, saying Comcast’s actions pose risks to subscribers and are taken without seeking their authorization. Plaintiff Toyer Grear and daughter Joycelyn Harris of Alameda County, California, filed the suit on December 4 ( PDF ) in US District Court in Northern California, seeking class action status on behalf of all Comcast customers who lease wireless routers that broadcast Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots. “Without authorization to do so, Comcast uses the wireless routers it supplies to its customers to generate additional, public Wi-Fi networks for its own benefit,” the complaint states. The plaintiffs seek financial damages and an order preventing Comcast “from using residential customers’ wireless routers to create Xfinity Wi-Fi Hotspots without first obtaining authorization.” Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast sued by customers for turning routers into public hotspots

A silk casing enables long-lasting, implantable Wi-Fi medical devices

Not the silk casing discussed. Flickr user: CameliaTWU For a variety of medical reasons, it’s useful to implant devices inside the body. These devices may be needed to help regulate the cardiovascular system, or they can release drugs inside the body. Unfortunately, they’re also problematic. Once such a device has served its function, it must be removed, which necessitates another surgery. Plus, the presence can lead to complications such as infection, inflammation, and pain. To address some of these problems, scientists have developed new kinds of circuitry that can safely dissolve in the body. While these water-soluble devices don’t need to be removed, they come with a new problem—they dissolve too quickly for many purposes. So a group of researchers have now reported that they’ve developed a new way to control how long the devices last. The researchers propose that dissolving devices could be encased in a material made from silk protein and magnesium. The advantage of this approach comes from a property of the silk: its crystallinity. Different preparations of silk dissolve in water at different rates depending on their crystallinities. Altering this property allows researchers to choose among a range of dissolution times from only a few minutes up to a few weeks. This gives more control over the duration of the device, which is important, since different medical situations require devices that can last vastly different times. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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A silk casing enables long-lasting, implantable Wi-Fi medical devices

Microsoft makes a nod to subscriptions for Windows 10

Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner Microsoft Even as it has cut the price of Windows— offering it for free on phones and small screen tablets, plus there’s a Bing edition for everything else—Microsoft is still working on ways to monetize its platform. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was speaking to investors last week, and GeekWire reported that profits are still the goal. Asked if the plan was to make Windows a loss leader to draw people into the Microsoft ecosystem, Turner said that the company had “not had any conversations” on this. He reiterated this when asked if the company was going to start losing money on Windows, saying “that’s not any conversations that we’ve had… we’ve got to monetize it differently.” What form might that different monetization take? Turner says that “there are services involved. There are additional opportunities for us to bring additional services to the product and do it in a creative way.” Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft makes a nod to subscriptions for Windows 10

Ken May

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