Bitcoin dropped below $3, 000 on Friday as the cryptocurrency extended a brutal eight-day sell-off that has reduced its value against the dollar by a third. Financial Times reports: The currency traded as low as $2, 972, marking a 36 per cent fall from bitcoin’s close on September 7, and a collapse of 40 per cent from the highs struck earlier this month. The latest bout of selling came after BTCChina, one of the country’s biggest bitcoin exchanges, said it would halt trading at the end of the month. Focus has now shifted to the communist country’s other two big exchanges: OKCoin and Huobi. Alternative source. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tag: propaganda
Fewer People Are Dying of Cancer Than Ever Before
The number of Americans dying of cancer has dropped to a 25-year low, equaling an estimated 2, 143, 200 fewer deaths in that period, says the new annual report from the American Cancer Society. In that time, the racial and gender disparities that exist in cancer rates have also narrowed somewhat, but they remain wide in many places. From a report on The Outline: Though the incidence of cancer remained stable for women and dropped slightly — by 2 percent — in men, rates remain overall 20 percent higher in men while rate of death for men is 40 percent higher than in women. The rates of both incidence and death vary wildly based on the type of cancer. The data that the ACS is using run through the end of 2014 for incidents of cancer and through 2013 for deaths. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States for both men and women.. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Fewer People Are Dying of Cancer Than Ever Before
Virginia Police Spent $500K For An Ineffective Cellphone Surveillance System
Cell-site simulators can intercept phone calls and even provide locations (using GPS data). But Virginia’s state police force just revealed details about their actual use of the device — and it’s not pretty. Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: In 2014, the Virginia State Police spent $585, 265 on a specially modified Suburban outfitted with the latest and greatest in cell phone surveillance: the DRT 1183C, affectionately known as the DRTbox. But according to logs uncovered by public records website MuckRock, the pricey ride was only used 12 times — and only worked seven of those times. According to Virginia’s ACLU director, “each of the 12 uses cost almost $50, 000, and only 4 of them resulted in an arrest [raising] a significant question whether the more than half million dollars spent on the device and the vehicle…was a wise investment of public funds.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Virginia Police Spent $500K For An Ineffective Cellphone Surveillance System
Probe Of Leaked US NSA Hacking Tools Examines Operative’s Mistake
Joseph Menn and John Walcott, reporting for Reuters: A U.S. investigation into a leak of hacking tools used by the National Security Agency is focusing on a theory that one of its operatives carelessly left them available on a remote computer and Russian hackers found them, four people with direct knowledge of the probe told Reuters. The tools, which enable hackers to exploit software flaws in computer and communications systems from vendors such as Cisco Systems and Fortinet Inc, were dumped onto public websites last month by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers. The public release of the tools coincided with U.S. officials saying they had concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible for hacking political party organizations in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election. On Thursday, lawmakers accused Russia of being responsible. Various explanations have been floated by officials in Washington as to how the tools were stolen. Some feared it was the work of a leaker similar to former agency contractor Edward Snowden, while others suspected the Russians might have hacked into NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Probe Of Leaked US NSA Hacking Tools Examines Operative’s Mistake
Tor Project Completely Replaces Board After Sexual Assault Scandal
A little more than one month after the Tor Project’s public face Jacob Applebaum stepped down following accusations from multiple women that he sexually assaulted them, the nonprofit has completely replaced its board. Read more…
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Tor Project Completely Replaces Board After Sexual Assault Scandal
Go To Jail For Visiting a Web Site? Top Law Prof Talks Up the Idea
David Rothman writes: Eric Posner, the fourth most-cited law professor in the U.S., says the government may need to jail you if you even visit an ISIS site after enough warnings. He says, “Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way—and by this I mean ideas that lead directly to terrorist attacks that kill people. The novelty of this threat calls for new thinking about limits on freedom of speech. The law would provide graduated penalties. After the first violation, a person would receive a warning letter from the government; subsequent violations would result in fines or prison sentences. The idea would be to get out the word that looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden” There would be exemptions for Washington-blessed journalists and others. Whew! Alas, this man isn’t Donald Trump — he is a widely respected University of Chicago faculty member writing in Slate. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Go To Jail For Visiting a Web Site? Top Law Prof Talks Up the Idea
17-Year-Old American Sentenced to Eleven Years In Prison For Tweets Supporting ISIS
An American teenager was sentenced to 11 years in prison today for providing material support to terrorism . But Ali Shukri Amin, just 17 years old, never committed violence in the name of radical Islamic terrorism. His crime was running a Twitter account that celebrated the terrorist group and taught others how to send money through Bitcoin. Read more…
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17-Year-Old American Sentenced to Eleven Years In Prison For Tweets Supporting ISIS
Report: Russia and China Crack Encrypted Snowden Files
New submitter garyisabusyguy writes with word that, according to London’s Sunday Times, “Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services, ” and suggests this non-paywalled Reuters version, too. “MI6 has decided that it is too dangerous to operate in Russia or China, ” writes the submitter. “This removes intelligence capabilities that have existed throughout the Cold War, and which may have helped to prevent a ‘hot’ nuclear war. Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Report: Russia and China Crack Encrypted Snowden Files
Feds Plan For 35 Agencies To Collect, Share, Use Health Records of Americans
cold fjord writes: The Weekly Standard reports, “This week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which details the efforts of some 35 departments and agencies of the federal government and their roles in the plan to ‘advance the collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research.’ … Now that HHS has publicly released the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, the agency is seeking the input from the public before implementation. The plan is subject to two-month period of public comment before finalization. The comment period runs through February 6, 2015.” Among the many agencies that will be sharing records besides Health and Human Services are: Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Justice and Bureau of Prison, Department of Labor, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Personnel Management, National Institute of Standards and Technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Feds Plan For 35 Agencies To Collect, Share, Use Health Records of Americans
L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing
New submitter Prune (557140) writes with a link to a story at The Intercept which might influence the way you look at media coverage of the kind of government activity that deserves rigorous press scrutiny. According to the story, “Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.” Another telling excerpt: On Friday April 27, 2012, he emailed the press office a draft story that he and a colleague, David Cloud, were preparing. The subject line was “this is where we are headed, ” and he asked if “you guys want to push back on any of this.” It appears the agency did push back. On May 2, 2012, he emailed the CIA a new opening to the story with a subject line that asked, “does this look better?” The piece ran on May 16, and while it bore similarities to the earlier versions, it had been significantly softened. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing