— via Pasta be with you
For those of you wondering just how much access the Australian Government has access to from the US Government’s controversial PRISM spying program (you know, the one which allows the National Security Agency access into the servers of US-based technology giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and so on)? Wonder no more. According to The Age, it’s bucketloads — enough that the Government has had to build a new data centre to contain it. The newspaper reports:
Australian intelligence agencies are receiving
huge volumesofimmensely valuableinformation from the United States including through the controversial PRISM program, Fairfax Media can reveal. Thedata delugehas required the Australian government to build a state-of-the-art secret data storage facility just outside Canberra.
The news has prompted Greens Communications Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam, to accuse the Australian Government of being actively complicit
in the US surveillance of Australian citizens through their own email and social network accounts. Ludlam tells us in a media release issued late last night:
The Australian Government has denied any knowledge of the NSA’s widespread online surveillance of people around the world since it was revealed by Edward Snowden. It is now clear that the ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ routine is a sham,Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said.The Australian Government was aware of the spying, and collaborating to circumvent due process through receipt of vast amounts of surveillance material from the United States.
Next week I will move an Order for the production of documents in the Senate to finally get some disclosure from our Government. This will be a test for the opposition as well; it is essential they support this motion. On 7 June I put a series of questions to the Attorney General on Australian involvement in PRISM.
While the National Security Inquiry looks at the Government’s proposed data retention scheme, the Government is already up to its neck in spying on the communications of law-abiding Australian citizens. Next week I am introducing a Bill into the Senate to strengthen regulation of data collection on Australians, returning normal warrant procedures to law enforcement agencies accessing peoples’ private communications data.
But while the Greens fight hard to defend people’s privacy and civil liberties from increasingly audacious Australian Government agencies, the Government leaves the nation wide open to spying by the United States. The Government must reveal the extent of its complicity in this unprecedented intrusion
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
A rare copy of the comic book featuring Superman’s first appearance that lay undiscovered for over 70 years in the insulation of a house has sold for $175,000.
The high bidder for the copy of Action Comics No.1 in the online auction was a hard core, golden age comic book collector,
Stephen Fishler, CEO of ComicConnect.com, said Tuesday. The buyer’s name was not released. Fifty-one offers were submitted before bidding closed Monday night.
But Fishler said the buyer had been looking for a several months for a lower-grade, unrestored copy of the Man of Steel’s début, rather than a copy in better condition that could have cost well over $1 million — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Tom Johnson, 83, lives in the museum that is his home. In his own non-digital way, he curates his family’s legacy, the estimated 35,000 books and manuscripts that share his 113-year-old meandering and musty house on the Osage River.
Johnson has built wooden corridors that link the family three-story home to the family library, built in 1899 by his grandfather for a collection of 8,000 books, and another that connects the house to the annex library, built in 1990 when the library overflowed. Grandfather Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919) was known as the sage of the Osage
.
With his knit cap and Scotch-taped glasses, it is hard at times not to think of Tom Johnson as a living exhibit from a time when the printed word shook the world like the digital word shakes it today.
The Johnson Library and Museum became a non-profit in 1990. Its board of directors includes David Richards, an associate professor at Missouri State University who oversees the school’s special collections and archives — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Reddit user twentyfourfifty took on the time-consuming job of straightening a severely warped, but beautiful 12.5′ piece of wood, and managing cracks that had formed with handmade Dutchmen (or butterfly joints).
He then sanded and polished it, and mounted it on his living room wall until such a time as he inhabits a space that can accommodate a dining room table fit for a king — via MAKE
Apple Bloom knows a lot of tricks despite not having her cutie mark yet and she surely doesn’t need the help of the cutie pox just to be good with a loop-de-hoop. Although her highly developed tail dexterity probably rubs off from her big sister, Applejack who in turn is phenomenal with a lasso — via Youtube
Posing Blacky, originally uploaded by Tambako the Jaguar.
Australia’s Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has made the extraordinary declaration that Australian law enforcement in Australia would grind to a halt
if police officers and other law enforcement agents were forced to apply for a warrant every time they wanted to access Australians’ telecommunications data.
Last week Budget Estimates hearing sessions conducted in Canberra heard that the Australian Federal Police had made 43,362 internal requests for so-called metadata
(data pertaining to the numbers, email addresses time, length and date involved in phone calls or emails, but not the content) over the past financial year. No warrant is required for these requests.
The revelations, combined with historical data tracking law enforcement and other Federal Government agency use of metadata without warrants and the revelations over the past week thatthe US-based National Security Agency has gained backdoor access into the data servers of major technology companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, has spurred calls by Australian political groups for a ban on warrant-less interception of Australian telecommunications data.
For example, the Australian Greens this week noted that it would next week introduce legislation to strengthen regulation of data collection on Australians, returning “normal warrant procedures” to law enforcement agencies accessing peoples’ private data.
This is the first step to winding back the kind of surveillance overreach revealed by the PRISM whistleblower,
Greens communications spokesperson and Senator Scott Ludlam said in a statement. Law enforcement agencies – not including ASIO — made 293,501 requests for telecommunications data in 2011-12, without a warrant or any judicial oversight. Under the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act, that’s entirely legal.
Vast amounts of private data are being accessed — including the precise location of everyone who carries a smartphone — without any recourse to the courts. A law enforcement agency simply fills out a very basic form. My bill will return to the system where they will need a warrant
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Following High Court orders, six UK ISPs are required to block subscriber access to several of the world’s largest torrent sites.
The blocking orders are intended to deter online piracy and were requested by the music industry group BPI on behalf of a variety of major labels. Thus far they’ve managed to block access to The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, H33T and Fenopy, and preparations are being made to add many others.
The effectiveness of these initial measures has been called into doubt, as they are relatively easy to bypass. For example, in response to the blockades hundreds of proxy sites popped up, allowing subscribers to reach the prohibited sites via a detour.
However, as of this week these proxies are also covered by the same blocklist they aim to circumvent, without a new court ruling — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A rose engine lathe (Wikipedia) is a type of geometric lathe used to produce complex radial engravings called Guilloché, which are used both for decorative and security (ie, anti-counterfeiting) purposes.
Those of you with more than $238,000 of disposable cash lying around may be irked to discover that the auction for this stunningly beautiful antique specimen is long closed. At least we can all still enjoy the gorgeous photographs, courtesy Massachusetts-based Skinner Auctioneers, who sealed the deal back in December. Their site is actually chock-a-block with beautiful old tools, instruments, and apparatus — via MAKE
Five lively South American Coati babies are keeping their mother busy at the Taipei Zoo. Born on 23 March, the babies progressed in their development quickly, opening their eyes at five days and standing at 12 days — via ZooBorns
A British salvage team has lifted a German World War II bomber from the seabed off the coast of south-east England.
The Dornier Do 17 was shot down during the Battle of Britain in August 1940, but was only discovered by divers in 2008.
Covered with barnacles and missing a wing, the dripping wreck of the plane was slowly raised 15 metres to the surface at Goodwin Sands, Kent, at the mouth of the English Channel — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Federal police are obtaining Australians’ phone and internet records without warrants nearly 1000 times a week, it has emerged as controversy rages over a vast US surveillance program.
Revelations in a recent Senate estimates hearing include efforts by the Australian Federal Police to access Facebook and Google data of the kind gathered under the US National Security Agency’s controversial PRISM program.
The revelations draw Australia into the furious global debate about secret surveillance, which has erupted since US whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked sensitive details of the NSA’s spying program — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Over the past days the PRISM scandal has dominated the news. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pushed out leak after leak, revealing how millions of people around the world are being monitored by US intelligence agencies.
The revelations turned online privacy into a worldwide mainstream discussion. Privacy activists shouted we told you so
, Orwell quotes were rife, and Kim Dotcom warmed up the public for his PRISM-proof email service.
Following the leaks the NSA and the US Government have been heavily criticized for their disregard of people’s privacy, and perhaps not totally unexpectedly this weekend the first legal action was filed.
TorrentFreak just obtained a copy of a complaint submitted at a federal court in Columbia, targeting President Obama, the NSA, Eric Holder and Verizon who all played a role in the mass surveillance scheme.
The class action lawsuit was filed by Larry Klayman, a former US prosecutor under the Reagan administration, together with the parents of the killed Navy SEAL Team VI member Michael Strange.
The plaintiffs accuse the PRISM participants of violating their constitutional rights, reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and association, right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, among other illegal and criminal acts. Both Klayman and the Navy Seal parents demand compensation for the damage they suffered — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A man has been issued with a ticket for riding a rocket-propelled skateboard on the main street of a western Queensland town.
Police in Barcaldine, east of Longreach, spotted the skateboarder on Oak Street about 10.00pm (AEST) on Saturday.
District officer Inspector Michael Fawcett says the man was not wearing a helmet and officers were surprised to witness the dangerous incident.
They noticed him activate something that looked like a rocket that was attached to the rear of the skateboard,
he said.
When they did actually catch up with him, he’d actually duct taped a small rocket to the skateboard and was using that to propel himself down the road.
I understand the rocket was commercially available. On talking to the officers there, they didn’t notice that it made a whole heap of difference to his speed
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Dutch artist Ingrid Siliakus has been designing and building paper architecture
ever since she began studying the work of Japanese architect Masahiro Chatani, the alleged founder of this origami-like model-making process.
Siliakus’s intricate designs emerge from single pieces of paper, their forms finalised after the artist experiments with countless trial runs and prototypes. Her meticulous metropolises layer paper silhouettes of buildings with their own cut-out negatives and the delicate shadows cast by their fragile facades — via Architizer
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