Leaked National Security Agency hacking tools are exposing how even the technology designed to safeguard our computer networks can put users at risk — and how poor security practices like clinging to old equipment can make things worse.
The trove, which mysteriously appeared online last weekend, is full of hacking tools that can break through systems that businesses and even government agencies use to secure their digital infrastructure. In some cases, the tools can be used to attack equipment that is still being used, but so outdated that the companies that made them don’t plan to release fixes.
Source: Washington Post
The FBI has admitted that it flew surveillance planes equipped with high-resolution cameras over the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and Baltimore, Maryland—part of a secret program that has monitored over 30 major cities from the skies using aircraft registered to fake companies. And in New York City, the NYPD has outfitted unmarked white vans with advanced X-ray equipment capable of seeing through walls and even people’s clothes.
“There is a huge disparity between the amount of technologies used by the authorities and the technologies available to protesters and activists during protests and riots,” warn Pedro Oliveira and Xuedi Chen, two designers from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. “That gap is only getting wider.”
Oliveira and Chen hope to even the odds with an electronic arsenal of their own. At the Radical Networks conference in Brooklyn this past October, they presented the Backslash kit, a package of devices that help protesters stay safe and connected during demonstrations. Gadgets include everything from portable routers that create improvised communication networks in the event of an Internet blackout to a pendant that blocks radio signals (to prevent cell phone surveillance).
Source: Ars Technica
What Happened When I Pushed Myself to Interview More Women:
Therein we find one of journalism’s roles in the silicon divide: journalists simply don’t interview enough female sources. I’ve never found a real study of male versus female sources in science reporting, but in other topics—such as presidential politics—the number of female sources is sometimes as low as 20 percent.
Why does this matter? For one thing, as Gloria Steinem famously said, “you can’t be what you can’t see.” If young women don’t see people like themselves in movies or books or on TV—or read about them in the articles that journalists write about high-tech industries—will they picture themselves working in those professions? At the very least, when journalists ignore female sources, we are contributing to the problem, not helping.
Why Does Silicon Valley Want to Get So Many Women Pregnant?
From period apps that predict a woman’s most fertile days to startups that claim to fast-track in vitro fertilization (IVF), reproductive tech is booming, and investors are digging deeper into their coffers to make sure everyone who wants a biological child can have one.
Somehow, women’s fertility apps have found a profitable niche in the predominantly-male tech scene, surging past all other mobile health apps in terms of funding revenue in 2014.
But while the tech industry has invested millions to ensure that future-mothers deliver happy and healthy babies, it also hopes they’ll deliver a lot of valuable private information.
As more women turn to data-driven fertility products, will they be forced to choose between taking control of their health and ceding control of how their personal information is used?
Electrodes that attach to your skull to evaluate your compatibility with a potential mate. A personal drone that hovers nearby and shines a spotlight on your wedding band (in “flaunt mode,” it circles your ring finger using “twelve dramatic flyover techniques”). A smart home system that encourages closeness by rationing out internet access and drinking water depending on how much intimate time you’ve spent with your partner.
Those are a few of the ideas at “Love, Optimized,” a new exhibit at the MIT Keller Gallery in Cambridge, Mass. The show, which feels like a cross between a Rube Goldberg diagram and a Harlan Ellison hellscape, explores potential future technologies that might come to mediate sex and romance—with a touch of whimsy and dread.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are about as different stylistically as can be. But when it comes to Internet policy, they’re both equally in the dark — and just as willing to dismiss gaps in their thinking by making vague assumptions about America’s engineering know-how.
This resort to hand-waving about “brilliant people” is problematic, not least because some of the very technologists whom the candidates invoke to justify their positions are the same people telling them things aren’t as easy as they seem. The result is a political dialogue about technology and terrorism that not only evades the complexities of the issues but also increases the likelihood of policy mistakes derived from a misshapen tech worldview.
Source: Washington Post