Wikileaks-Twitter Probe Draws Heat in Europe
An influential group of European politicians is protesting the U.S. government's attempt to pry Wikileaks-related information out of Twitter, saying that EU privacy rules may have been violated.
The parliamentary maneuver expected tomorrow comes as London-based lawyers for Wikileaks editor Julian Assange warned that their client could face illegal rendition to the United States, execution, or indefinite detention "at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere," and a U.K. judge set a two-day extradition hearing to start on February.
Tomorrow's parliamentary protest, calling on the EU to "ask the U.S. authorities for clarifications on the subpoenas imposed on Twitter," is being organized by a group called the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. It boasts 85 members, making it the third largest group in the European Parliament, and claims it holds the balance of power between the left and the right.
Continue »Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans
This story originally appeared on CNET
istockphoto.com
STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.
That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.
The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.
Continue »Artist Creates New Batch of "Porn for the Blind"
An image from artist Lisa J. Murphy's latest batch of "porn for the blind," or highly-stylized erotic art in braille, depending on your opinion.
/ Lisa J. Murphy/Tactile Atelier BookmarkLast year, Murphy's book called "Tactile Mind," which featured several nude, 3-D pictures of men and women along with braille descriptions, gained new life in the media, two years after its release. Last week, she released four new images, featuring a woman's legs in stiletto shoes, as well as "a photograph of a woman's behind...wearing soft pink" panties.
The original book comes with the hefty price of $225, and the new set of images cost $100, according to Murphy's website. In an interview with AOL News, she says the process of creating the images takes up to 50 hours for each, and therefore the high price tag for the unusual art - or porn, depending on your point of view - is justifiable.
"I took photographs of my friends in lingerie, blew up the images and hand-sculpted them into clay," Murphy told AOL News. "Then I made thermoform copies. I ran the plastic myself through my thermoform machine at home, so each one took awhile to make."
The hardest of the four images in her latest batch of creations was the female behind, Murphy said.
"The butt was really hard to sculpt. I wanted to get it nice and even and give it a feminine softness so it would actually feel like a woman's butt. It took me days to sculpt all the curves right, but I'm told it does feel like a woman's butt in a G-string," she told AOL News.
In an interview last year with the daily Toronto Star, Murphy said many people have bought her books and images as art objects, and most buyers have been sighted patrons.
As for whether it's art or porn, "it depends on your eye," she said.
The four new images are supposed to be a placeholder of sorts while Murphy works on a new book of 3-D nudes, according to Murphy's interview with the Star.
"(The next book will) be much more erotic...with couples," Murphy said.
Breath Sensor Could Offer On-the-Spot Cancer Report
Researchers are using nanoparticles to create a material sensitive enough to analyze a person's breath in real time and detect indicators of cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses.
Human Cancer Cells
/ APScientists at Purdue University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology said today that even though diagnostic breath-analysis tools have been around for several decades, this is the first time a material has been developed that's sensitive enough to deliver on-the-spot results.
"We are talking about creating an inexpensive, rapid way of collecting diagnostic information about a patient," Carlos Martinez, an assistant professor of materials engineering at Purdue, said in the statement. "It might say, '... you are metabolizing a specific compound indicative of this type of cancer,' and then additional, more complex tests could be conducted to confirm the diagnosis."
Continue »Arriving on the Battle Field: iPhones, Androids
The iPhone may soon be among the smart phones deployed to combat soldiers under a new program by the U.S. military designed to streamline communications and intelligence gathering.
/ James Martin/CNETNow imagine the possible ways in which having an iPhone or an Android on hand might make a soldier's life in combat easier.
Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, said the military is testing the deployment of smart phones to soldiers in the field, the Army Times reports.
"One of the options potentially is to make it a piece of equipment in a soldier's clothing bag," Vane said.
Army-issued smart phones are already in the schoolhouse and garrison, in the hands of some students at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., Fort Lee, Va., and at Fort Sill, Okla., under an Army program called Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications, the paper reports. CSDA's next step, already underway at Fort Bliss, Texas, is testing for the war zone.
Continue »Amazon.com No Longer a Home to WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks has had trouble finding a safe home on the internet since it dumped 250,000 State Department documents on the general public.
/ CBS/AP(CBS/AP) Wikileaks' members may not be invited to any State Department dinners anytime soon, and it appears they may be having trouble making friends online too.
The WikiLeaks website has left its U.S. Web host, Amazon.com, and moved back to a Swedish provider, the Associated Press reports.
It was unclear whether Amazon forced the site to leave or if it did so on its own. Neither side provided comment to the AP.
"Gmail Killer" From Facebook on Its Way?
No longer content to just dominate the social media landscape, Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to announce plans to launch a new free email system. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
/ AP PhotoAfter thoroughly vanquishing its foes in social media, Facebook now turns its attention to virtual communications today, when it is expected to announce plans for a new free email system.
Dubbed "Project Titan," the TechCrunch website reports that Facebook staffers have been referring to it as "the Gmail killer," in reference to Google's popular free email system.
"There is a huge opportunity for these guys to fundamentally change the nature of e-mail," Silicon Valley-based research analyst Matt Cain told the San Jose Mercury News.
Imagine, Cain said, a Facebook system that could prioritize mail from any external source based on the closeness of your relationship to the sender, or that allows you to easily flip a one-to-one e-mail exchange into a conversation with a group of friends.
Facebook already offers a way to communicate with other Facebook members in an email-like system, but it is closed to non-Facebook users. The Mercury News cites data saying that 90 percent of U.S. adults check e-mail regularly, but only 59 percent use social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter.
Even though Hotmail (Microsoft's email system) and Yahoo Mail still hold a clear lead internationally on email subscribers, with 362 million and 273 million users respectively compared to Gmail's 193 million users, reports the Mercury News, it is telling that Facebook staffers have been referring to their new system as the Google email killer.
Facebook and Google have been engaged in conflicts over user data and information for a while now.
Unhappy with Facebook's unwillingness to let people export their contacts from Facebook into a service like Gmail, Google last week blocked Facebook from allowing users to import their Google contacts directly into the social network.
This has led to an unprecedented war of words between the two internet giants, and Facebook's announcement that it is trying to take down Gmail will surely just add to the rivalry. The good news is that, when businesses fight, it's usually the consumer who wins.
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