Sunday, March 31, 2013

Diggins leads Notre Dame past Kansas, 93-63

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) ? Skylar Diggins was already having such a great day, her coach figured she might as well make it historic.

The Notre Dame point guard scored 22 of her 27 points by halftime Sunday and became the school's career scoring leader, leading the top-seeded Fighting Irish to a 93-63 victory against Kansas in the semifinals of the Norfolk Regional.

Coach Muffet McGraw had forgotten all about Diggins' pursuit of the school scoring mark until the game was well in hand. When she asked, she was told the senior was just two points away from passing assistant coach Beth Cunningham.

"I told her, 'You're coming out in 30 seconds. You might as well get one more,'" McGraw said she told Diggins.

Moments later, with 7:48 to play, the lefthander in her trademark white headband swished a 12-foot jumper.

"Coach told me to score two more. I didn't really know why, but I was like, 'OK,'" Diggins said.

It was that kind of the day for Diggins, who heard talk beforehand that the Norfolk Regional was full of great point guards, and quickly showed she might not have a peer, especially at this time of year with the stakes so high.

"We play in games that are so much like Sweet 16 or Elite Eight kind of caliber games in our conference," she said. "That helps all of us."

So does having a leader that makes it all look so easy. Diggins added nine assists and three steals, scored nine straight during a 16-2 first-half run that put the Irish (34-1) ahead to stay, and six more to cap a 10-2 run into halftime.

"She's what everyone says," Kansas point guard Angel Goodrich, who finished with seven points and 13 assists, said. "She's the whole package. She can create for herself and she can create for her teammates."

The victory was the 29th in a row for Notre Dame, and left the Irish one victory shy of a third consecutive trip to the Final Four. They have lost in the title game each of the last two years.

Carolyn Davis led the upstart Jayhawks (20-14) with 25 points on 11-for-17 shooting, but the second No. 12 seed ever to get this far in the women's tournament since the seeding format began in 1994 didn't stick around long.

Notre Dame led 40-27 at halftime and started the second half with a 22-9 run.

"We definitely let them play comfortable and confident," Jayhawks coach Bonnie Henrickson said. "I was disappointed our defensive effort wasn't better."

Goodrich's head-to-head duel with Diggins never materialized. When Goodrich, like Diggins a senior, finally scored with 5:48 left in the first half, Diggins already had 16 points and her team was about to make another run before halftime.

It came in the final 4:30 of the half, a 10-2 burst capped by two 3-pointers by Diggins.

"When she starts hitting the 3, you're in trouble," McGraw said.

Natalie Achonwa added 17 points and 10 rebounds for Notre Dame, Jewell Lloyd scored 15 and Kayla McBride 13 as the Fighting Irish shot 54.4 percent from the field, making 37 of 69 attempts.

Monica Engelman added 10 points for Kansas, but on just 4 of 16 shooting.

The Irish trailed 15-11 when Lloyd made a 3-pointer with 14:37 to go and then Diggins took over. She hit a 16-footer, a 17-footer, a 3-pointer and then had a steal and layup, making it 23-15. After Davis' stickback for the Jayhawks, Ariel Braker scored inside and Diggins did, too, posting up Goodrich.

The 16-2 run gave the Fighting Irish a 27-17 lead, and the spread stayed about the same until late in the half when Diggins hit a 3-pointer, then followed a turnover with another 3 from the right side.

___

Follow Hank on twitter at: http://twitter.com/hankkurzjr

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/diggins-leads-notre-dame-past-kansas-93-63-180031658--spt.html

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Saturday, March 30, 2013

We'll Never Achieve STEM Goals Without Computer Science ...

Published by EducationNews.org ????Everyone in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.? ? Steve Jobs, founder of Apple

Back in the day, the high-tech innovation that rocked my world was a self-correcting typewriter.? Mere keystrokes replaced the black-ink ribbon with a white-out tape so I could erase mistakes by typing.? Absolute bliss for someone living a writing-intensive life.

Today, super-sophisticated computers and electronics are everywhere.? Literally.? Devices are in everyone?s hands (to an annoying extent), implanted in people?s bodies, and managing all manner of data-heavy work like traffic, government databases, massive communications systems, and more.

Electronic technology has become the lifeblood of all developed economies.? Even nature-bound work ? landscape gardeners, wedding florists and farmers ? use computers for billing, research, ordering supplies, advertising their wares.

Ubiquitous.? Critical to everyone?s daily life.

So you would think that America?s K-12 education system would be frantically preparing students for all manner of computer skills, from software engineers to hardware experts.? But how many schools do you know that routinely offer computer science in their curriculum, to most students?

For years now, the business community has been pushing educators to get more students into STEM fields ? without great success.? STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.? The remarkable dearth of qualified employees in these areas means that even during the recent recession, thousands of jobs went begging for lack of trained applicants.

But in last December?s?presentation?to the Massachusetts? Governor?s STEM Council, an industry group, the MASS Tech Hub, made the point that the foundational problem is the lack of computer science.? ?Computing is both the biggest job sector of STEM today?andhas the largest future growth expectations.? ..? Tech isn?t just an industry or a job function, it?s part of nearly every aspect of our economy.?? No STEM job gets done without computer science.

Massachusetts, btw, has perhaps the best trained technology workforce in the country.? Its tech sector produces nearly 20 percent of their Gross Domestic Product.? But they are scrambling for workers.

Between 2010-2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the current 900,000 software engineering jobs to grow by 30 percent.? The 300,000 computer and information systems managerial jobs will grow 18 percent.? Database administrators, 31 percent.? And that?s not even counting the civil engineers or biochemists and biophysicisists.

Hey, it?s not even considering the Information Technology (IT) person that virtually every organization now needs on staff or available for hire.

Ask any business who needs software engineers if they can find workers.? Mighty slim pickings.? Anecdotally, my data pals report that their new hires are largely self-taught.? Schools are very little help with this problem.

So an industry group has resorted to selling computer science via celebrity gods.? Check out the aptly-named video?What Most Schools Don?t Teach?on code.org.? Super-celebrities like Bill Gates and Facebook?s Mark Zuckerberg, a basketball and a rap star talk about feeling like superstars when they first could make miracles happen on their computer screen.? Anyone, they assert, can read, do math, and program.? Coding is not the exclusive province of nerds and geniuses.? And even if you don?t enter a STEM field, the skills will support any field you choose.

Oh, and the not-so-subtle underlying message is that you too can be obscenely wealthy, famous, and work in cool places with live bands, pools and free lunch.

It quotes the late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple:? ?Everyone in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.?

Now that I agree with.

So if computer science is a necessary skill, right up there with reading and writing, why isn?t it pervasive in schools?

For the most comprehensive answer,?see?Running on Empty?? The Failure to Teach K?12 Computer Science in the Digital Age.? It says, for example, that even as ?we move toward an ever-more computing-intensive, ? most states treat high school computer science courses as simply an elective and not part of a student?s core education.?

Our system is greatly hampered by the fact that ?government policies underpinning the K?12 education system are deeply confused, conflicted, or inadequate to teach engaging computer science as an academic subject.?

Only 9 states allow computer science to count towards math or science requirements.

If anything, since NCLB?s demand that all kids perform proficiently, according to state standards, computer science has gotten increasingly pushed out of the school day, at best into elective courses ? that displace music and art ? or after-school clubs.

There?s no room for computer science in the conventional 6, 7-period secondary-school day, with its curriculum rooted in the 19th century.

Although, Russia, India and Israel, among others, found ways of embedding it in their schools, K-12.

America?s reputation as the nation of innovators is receding.? The K-12 system needs a re-boot, and not just more tinkering around the edges.

Thoughts on a partial solution next week.

Julia Steiny?is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at?GoLocalProv.com?and?GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data.For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at?juliasteiny@gmail.com?or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

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Source: http://juliasteiny.com/2013/03/29/well-never-achieve-stem-goals-without-computer-science/

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Elite Eight Teams: Louisville, Michigan Among Teams In 2013 NCAA Tournament Regional Finals

The field of 68 teams in the 2013 NCAA Tournament has been winnowed down to the Elite Eight. Sixty of the best college basketball teams in the nation, including the team that entered the tournament atop the AP poll, have been sent home. The eight teams remaining will play in four regional finals on Saturday and Sunday, with the winners advancing to the Final Four in Atlanta.

With wins on Thursday night, Marquette and Syracuse ensured that at least one Big East team would reach the Georgia Dome. Buzz Williams' Golden Eagles will attempt to solve the 2-3 zone defense of the Orange in the opening Elite Eight game on Saturday. The conference rivals tip off at 4:30 p.m. EST in Washington, DC in the East Region.

Another Big East team (for now), Louisville, is the only No. 1 seed to reach the regional finals. Rick Pitino's Cardinals held off the No. 12 Oregon Ducks on Friday night in the Sweet 16. The Cards will face Duke in Indianapolis on Sunday.

Here are the eight teams remaining and the roads they traveled to arrive at the regional finals.

  • SOUTH: No. 4 Michigan

    <strong>Second Round:</strong> Tim Hardaway Jr. and Glenn Robinson III scored 21 points each as the Wolverines dropped 13-seeded South Dakota State, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/michigan-south-dakota-nate-wolters_n_2928663.html" target="_blank">71-56</a>. <strong>Third Round: </strong> No. 5 VCU was no match for Michigan. Dominant performances by Mitch McGary and Trey Burke solved the Havoc defense and the Wolverines advanced to the Sweet 16 with a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/michigan-vcu-blowout-ncaa-tournament-mcgary-burke_n_2940306.html" target="_blank">78-53 blowout</a> win. <strong>Sweet 16: </strong>Trey Burke shook off a slow start and rallied No. 4 Michigan past No. 1 Kansas. The sensational sophomore drained a game-tying three-point shot to force overtime and the Wolverines went on to win 87-85.

  • MIDWEST: No. 1 Louisville

    <strong>Second Round:</strong> Rick Pitino's Cardinals completely overwhelmed No. 16 North Carolina A&T, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/louisville-north-carolina-at-ncaa-tournament_n_2928680.html" target="_blank">79-48</a>. <strong>Third Round: </strong> Russ Smith scored 27 points as Louisville topped No. 8 Colorado State <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/louisville-sweet-16-colorado-state-ncaa_n_2941352.html" target="_blank">82-56</a>. <strong>Sweet 16: </strong>No. 12 Oregon gave the Cardinals their first test of the tournament. Russ Smith scored 31 points as Louisville held off the Ducks for a 77-69 win.

  • EAST: No. 3 Marquette

    <strong>Second Round:</strong> Vander Blue kept the Golden Eagles dancing with a game-winning shot against No. 14 Davidson with just one second left on the clock. Marquette inched by with a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/vander-blue-marquette-davidson_n_2927170.html?utm_hp_ref=sports" target="_blank">59-58 win to advance</a>. <strong>Third Round:</strong> In another thrilling finish, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/marquette-butler-ncaa-tournament-2013_n_2941847.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003" target="_blank">Marquette topped Butler</a> 74-72. Vander Blue played the hero once again, recording 29 points. <strong>Sweet 16: </strong>After a pair of tense games, Marquette enjoyed its most comfortable win of the tournament. The Golden Eagles went ahead 29-16 at hafltime and held on for a 71-61 win over No. 2 Miami.

  • WEST: No. 9 Wichita State

    <strong>Second Round:</strong> Carl Hall and Wichita State blew past Pitt in its second round matchup, 73-55. Tekele Cotton and the Shockers' defense held Pitt's leading scorer <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/wichita-state-pitt-ncaa-tournament-second-round_n_2926238.html" target="_blank">Tray Woodall to just two points</a>. Malcolm Armstead scored 22 for Wichita State. <strong>Third Round:</strong> The Shockers <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/wichita-state-win-gonzaga-ncaa_n_2941956.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003" target="_blank">upset No. 1 seed Gonzaga</a>, taking an early lead into the second half and rallying late to secure the win over the Zags, 76-70. <strong>Sweet 16:</strong> In a Cinderella vs. Cinderella matchup, the Shockers overwhelmed No. 13 La Salle. Malcolm Armstead and Carl Hall led the way as Wichita State rolled to a 72-58 win.

  • EAST: No. 4 Syracuse

    <strong>Second Round:</strong>?The Orange demolished No. 13 Montana, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/syracuse-montana-ncaa-tournament-81-34_n_2929599.html" target="_blank">81-34</a>, to advance to the third round. <strong>Third Round:</strong> In a game that Syracuse coach <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/24/syracuse-cal-ncaa-scores-2013_n_2942025.html?1364098606&utm_hp_ref=sports" target="_blank">Jim Boeheim described as "ugly,"</a> C.J. Fair scored 18 points as the Orange held off Cal, 66-60. <strong>Sweet 16: </strong>The Orange toppled No. 1 Indiana in the Sweet 16, 61-50. The Hoosiers could not solve Syracuse's 2-3 zone and produced a season-low point total.

  • WEST: No. 2 Ohio State

    <strong>Second Round:</strong> Deshaun Thomas and Ohio State crushed Iona in a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/ohio-state-iona-ncaa-scores_n_2937085.html" target="_blank">95-70</a> second round blowout. Sam Thompson scored 20 points and racked up 10 rebounds for the Buckeyes. <strong>Third Round:</strong> Ohio State narrowly escaped an upset by Iowa State. Aaron Craft sank a game-winning 3-point shot with less than a seconds left <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/24/ohio-state-iowa-state-ncaa-scores_n_2945076.html" target="_blank">to propel Ohio State to the Sweet 16</a>. <strong>Sweet 16:</strong> With No. 6 Arizona seemingly determined not to let Aaron Craft hit another game-winning shot, LaQuinton Ross stepped up. His deep three-point shot lifted the Buckeyes to a 73-70 win.

  • SOUTH: No. 3 Florida

    <strong>Second Round:</strong> Erik Murphy scored 18 points and Florida routed Northwestern State <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/florida-northwesten-state-ncaa-scores_n_2936954.html" target="_blank">79-47</a>. <strong>Third Round:</strong> Florida built a 21-point lead over Minnesota by halftime and rolled to a 78-64 win. <strong>Sweet 16: </strong>After falling behind Florida Gulf Coast University early, No. 2 Florida went on a 16-0 run to take control of the game before halftime. The Gators cruised to a 62-50 win.

  • MIDWEST: No. 2 Duke

    <strong>Second Round: </strong>Despite a solid effort by the Great Danes of Albany, Duke avoided an early upset this year, winning 73-61. <strong>Third Round</strong>: Duke prevailed in a physical matchup with No. 7 Creighton, 66-50. <strong>Sweet 16: </strong>Seth Curry shot the Blue Devils past Michigan State in the Sweet 16. Curry scored 29 as No. 2 Duke won 71-61.

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/30/elite-eight-teams-2013-ncaa-tournament_n_2982634.html

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FDA OKs first-of-a-kind diabetes drug from J&J

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Food and Drug Administration says it has approved a first-of-a-kind diabetes drug from Johnson & Johnson that uses a new method to lower blood sugar.

The agency cleared J&J's Invokana tablets for adults with Type 2 diabetes, which affects about 26 million Americans.

The drug is a once-a-day medicine designed to lower blood sugar levels in patients by eliminating more sugar in their urine. The drug works by blocking the reabsorption of sugar by the kidneys, which occurs at higher levels in patients with diabetes.

J&J has touted the drug as the first in a new class of medications to help address the nation's growing diabetes epidemic. The drug differs from older drugs that work by decreasing the amount of sugar absorbed from food and stored in the liver.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fda-oks-first-kind-diabetes-drug-j-j-190120185--finance.html

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A Sculpture Made of 10,000 Balloons Redefines Balloon Art

Jason Hackensworth is a balloon artist, but not the kind that wears oversized shoes and has been the villain in a 1990 horror movie. He's known for his balloon sculptures of biological forms and creatures, like this anemone-like sculpture, currently on display in the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/pVy9rd2pf6s/a-sculpture-made-of-10000-balloons-redefines-balloon-art

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Friday, March 29, 2013

Study: 'Waste heat' may economize CO2 capture

Study: 'Waste heat' may economize CO2 capture [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Jade Boyd
jadeboyd@rice.edu
713-348-6778
Rice University

Rice U. team seeks to optimize CO2 removal from power plant emissions

HOUSTON -- (March 28, 2013) -- In some of the first results from a federally funded initiative to find new ways of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power plants, Rice University scientists have found that CO2 can be removed more economically using "waste" heat -- low-grade steam that cannot be used to produce electricity. The find is significant because capturing CO2 with conventional technology is an energy-intensive process that can consume as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that plants use to produce electricity.

"This is just the first step in our effort to better engineer a process for capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants," said George Hirasaki, the lead researcher of Rice's CO2-capture research team. The researchers hope to reduce the costs of CO2 capture by creating an integrated reaction column that uses waste heat, engineered materials and optimized components. Hirasaki's team was one of 16 chosen by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 2011 to develop innovative techniques for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The team's first findings appear in two new studies that are available online this month in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.

Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO2 that humans add to the atmosphere each year; these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO2 before it goes up in smoke. Each of these plants makes electricity by boiling water to create steam to run electric turbines. But not all steam is equal. Some steam has insufficient energy to run a turbine. This is often referred to as "waste" heat, although the term is something of misnomer because low-grade steam is often put to various uses around a plant. Rice's new study found that in cases where waste is available, it may be used to capture CO2.

Hirasaki, Rice's A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said employing waste heat is just one example of a number of ways that Rice's team is looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO2 capture. That technology -- a two-phase chemical process -- has been used for decades to remove naturally occurring CO2 from natural gas.

In the first phase of the process, gas is piped upward through a vertical column while an ammonia-like liquid called amine flows down through the column. The liquid amine captures CO2 and drains away while the purified natural gas bubbles out the top of the column. In the second phase of the process, the CO2-laden amine is recycled with heat, which drives off the CO2.

"The CO2 that comes out of the ground with natural gas is under high pressure, while the CO2 at power plants is not," Hirasaki said. "There's also a greater volume of CO2 per unit mass at a power plant than at a natural gas well. For these reasons and others, the amine process must be re-engineered if it is to be cost-effective for CO2 capture at power plants."

A major challenge in adapting two-phase amine processing for power plants is the amount of heat required to recycle the amine in the second phase of the process. Using existing amine processing technology at power plants is impractical, because amine recycling would require as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that could otherwise be used to drive turbines and make electricity, Hirasaki said. This phenomenon is known as "parasitic" power loss, and it will drive up the cost of electricity by lowering the amount of electricity a plant can produce for sale.

"It has been estimated that the use of current technology for CO2 capture would drive up the cost of electricity by 70 to 100 percent," said Rice graduate student Sumedh Warudkar, a co-investigator on the Rice University team. "In our study, we examined whether it would be possible to improve on that by using lower-value steam to run the amine recyclers."

To test this idea, Warudkar used a software package that's commonly used to model industrial chemical processes. One variable he tested was tailoring the chemical formulation of the liquid amine solution. Other variables included the type of steam used, and the size and pressure of the reactor -- the chamber where the flue gas flows past the amine solution.

"There's a great deal of optimization that needs to take place," Warudkar said. "The question is, What is the optimal amine formula and the optimal reactor design and pressure for removing CO2 with low-value steam? There isn't one correct answer. For example, we have developed a process in which the gas absorption and solvent heating occurs in a single vessel instead of two separate ones, as is currently practiced. We think combining the processes might bring us some savings. But there are always trade-offs. The Department of Energy wants us to investigate how our process compares with what's already on the market, and these first two studies are the first step because they will help us identify an optimal set of operating conditions for our process."

The results are encouraging. The research suggests that two elements of Rice's design -- optimized amine formulation and the use of waste heat -- can reduce parasitic power loss from about 35 percent to around 25 percent.

Additional research is under way to develop and test novel materials and a single integrated column that the team hopes can further economize CO2 capture by increasing efficiency and reducing parasitic power loss.

###

Study co-authors include Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, and Ken Cox, professor in the practice of chemical and biomolecular engineering. The research is supported by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

VIDEO is available at: http://youtu.be/-fi2gUbCPR8

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at: http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/0325-CAPTURE-Hirasaki-lg.jpg

CAPTION: New research by Rice University's George Hirasaki (left) and Sumedh Warudkar suggests that process optimization will allow engineers to significantly reduce the "parasitic" power costs of removing carbon dioxide from the exhaust of coal-fired power plants.

CREDIT: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Copies of the two studies in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control are available at:

Paper I

Paper II


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Study: 'Waste heat' may economize CO2 capture [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Jade Boyd
jadeboyd@rice.edu
713-348-6778
Rice University

Rice U. team seeks to optimize CO2 removal from power plant emissions

HOUSTON -- (March 28, 2013) -- In some of the first results from a federally funded initiative to find new ways of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power plants, Rice University scientists have found that CO2 can be removed more economically using "waste" heat -- low-grade steam that cannot be used to produce electricity. The find is significant because capturing CO2 with conventional technology is an energy-intensive process that can consume as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that plants use to produce electricity.

"This is just the first step in our effort to better engineer a process for capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants," said George Hirasaki, the lead researcher of Rice's CO2-capture research team. The researchers hope to reduce the costs of CO2 capture by creating an integrated reaction column that uses waste heat, engineered materials and optimized components. Hirasaki's team was one of 16 chosen by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 2011 to develop innovative techniques for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The team's first findings appear in two new studies that are available online this month in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.

Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO2 that humans add to the atmosphere each year; these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO2 before it goes up in smoke. Each of these plants makes electricity by boiling water to create steam to run electric turbines. But not all steam is equal. Some steam has insufficient energy to run a turbine. This is often referred to as "waste" heat, although the term is something of misnomer because low-grade steam is often put to various uses around a plant. Rice's new study found that in cases where waste is available, it may be used to capture CO2.

Hirasaki, Rice's A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said employing waste heat is just one example of a number of ways that Rice's team is looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO2 capture. That technology -- a two-phase chemical process -- has been used for decades to remove naturally occurring CO2 from natural gas.

In the first phase of the process, gas is piped upward through a vertical column while an ammonia-like liquid called amine flows down through the column. The liquid amine captures CO2 and drains away while the purified natural gas bubbles out the top of the column. In the second phase of the process, the CO2-laden amine is recycled with heat, which drives off the CO2.

"The CO2 that comes out of the ground with natural gas is under high pressure, while the CO2 at power plants is not," Hirasaki said. "There's also a greater volume of CO2 per unit mass at a power plant than at a natural gas well. For these reasons and others, the amine process must be re-engineered if it is to be cost-effective for CO2 capture at power plants."

A major challenge in adapting two-phase amine processing for power plants is the amount of heat required to recycle the amine in the second phase of the process. Using existing amine processing technology at power plants is impractical, because amine recycling would require as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that could otherwise be used to drive turbines and make electricity, Hirasaki said. This phenomenon is known as "parasitic" power loss, and it will drive up the cost of electricity by lowering the amount of electricity a plant can produce for sale.

"It has been estimated that the use of current technology for CO2 capture would drive up the cost of electricity by 70 to 100 percent," said Rice graduate student Sumedh Warudkar, a co-investigator on the Rice University team. "In our study, we examined whether it would be possible to improve on that by using lower-value steam to run the amine recyclers."

To test this idea, Warudkar used a software package that's commonly used to model industrial chemical processes. One variable he tested was tailoring the chemical formulation of the liquid amine solution. Other variables included the type of steam used, and the size and pressure of the reactor -- the chamber where the flue gas flows past the amine solution.

"There's a great deal of optimization that needs to take place," Warudkar said. "The question is, What is the optimal amine formula and the optimal reactor design and pressure for removing CO2 with low-value steam? There isn't one correct answer. For example, we have developed a process in which the gas absorption and solvent heating occurs in a single vessel instead of two separate ones, as is currently practiced. We think combining the processes might bring us some savings. But there are always trade-offs. The Department of Energy wants us to investigate how our process compares with what's already on the market, and these first two studies are the first step because they will help us identify an optimal set of operating conditions for our process."

The results are encouraging. The research suggests that two elements of Rice's design -- optimized amine formulation and the use of waste heat -- can reduce parasitic power loss from about 35 percent to around 25 percent.

Additional research is under way to develop and test novel materials and a single integrated column that the team hopes can further economize CO2 capture by increasing efficiency and reducing parasitic power loss.

###

Study co-authors include Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, and Ken Cox, professor in the practice of chemical and biomolecular engineering. The research is supported by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

VIDEO is available at: http://youtu.be/-fi2gUbCPR8

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at: http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/0325-CAPTURE-Hirasaki-lg.jpg

CAPTION: New research by Rice University's George Hirasaki (left) and Sumedh Warudkar suggests that process optimization will allow engineers to significantly reduce the "parasitic" power costs of removing carbon dioxide from the exhaust of coal-fired power plants.

CREDIT: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Copies of the two studies in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control are available at:

Paper I

Paper II


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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/ru-sh032813.php

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&#39;Avengers: Endless Wartime&#39;: Marvel&#39;s new graphic novel era begins ...

Marvel will start a new shelf of original graphic novels this October with the release of?Avengers: Endless Wartime, a 110-page epic by writer Warren Ellis and artist Mark McKone that will represent a number of milestone firsts.

Endless Wartime?will be the first Marvel title released simultaneously in North America, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Brazil, Finland and Turkey. The book includes a code for accessing a digital edition?via the Marvel Comics app and online in the Marvel Digital Comics Shop.?The book?s biggest distinction, however, is the somewhat odd fact that Marvel rarely publishes major original graphic novels ? more on that in a moment. But first a quick observation on Ellis: The man who dreamed up Spider Jerusalem and Planetary?is putting together a pretty special year.

The Brit?s second prose detective novel,?Gun Machine, hit the New York Times Bestseller list in January and his comics work will echo in two major studio releases this summer. There?s?Iron Man 3?(which draws core concepts and themes from?Iron Man: Extremis, the landmark 2005 story arc that pruned and primed the character?s mythology for Hollywood) and then?RED 2?(the sequel to 2010?s?RED,?which gets its spy-versus-spy-retiree concept and its title from the old Wildstorm limited series by Ellis and Cully Hamner).

I spoke to Ellis by transatlantic call about?Endless Wartime, which began as a business tactic (Marvel ordered up a book that might catch the curious eye of moviegoers, which is why the graphic novel is described as a ?movie-length epic? by its publisher and features four Avengers from the 2012 hit film: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and Hawkeye) and the wily Ellis was smart enough to add the one visual effect that Marvel Studios can?t match on the screen ? the sight of Wolverine standing next to Thor or Iron Man. The line-up is rounded out by Captain Marvel? a name that leads me back to the rarity factor represented by the Endless Wartime.

The term ?Marvel Graphic Novel? became a boutique brand after The Death of Captain Marvel, but if you hand a copy of that trailblazing April 1982 release to a contemporary reader they would say it looks more like a collector?s edition issue of magazine than a graphic novel.

If you go by a purist definition of ?graphic novel,? there haven?t been all that many published by Marvel, which instead churns out?trade paperbacks?that conveniently compile recent multi-issue story arcs or recycle the company?s vintage classics with yet another unexpected repackaging theme (which is why the Fantastic Four now rival the Beach Boys for compilation overkill). Avengers: Endless Wartime joins a short but illustrious stack of lengthy original stories presented in a unified form that includes peers like the The Silver Surfer, the 114-page cosmic novel from 1978 that marked the return of Jack Kirby to Marvel Comics.

That?s important to Ellis, who is coming up on his silver anniversary as a published writer and now looks to comics more for offbeat challenges than routine opportunities.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I don?t know much more than the title, so forgive the vague question: When you think about this new project, what aspect has you the most excited?
WARREN ELLIS:
They haven?t actually told me what I can tell you so, um, let me feel my way through this. The main reason I took it is this will be the first of Marvel?s graphic novel line. Really, it?s the first time they?ve done original graphic novels of this scale. You remember the old Marvel graphic novel line from the ?80s?

Oh yes. I distinctly remember buying The Death of Captain Marvel the day it came out.
Sure, and there were some fun books but they were short. They were largely 48- or 64-page stories, I want to say. And this one is 110. It?s much more in the mode of what we think of now as a graphic novel. This will be the first one of this new [publishing initiative] and that is what attracted me to do it in the first place.

It would seem to fit your writing style. There?s a sense of scale in your work and, more than that, you?re storytelling doesn?t seem as hurried or breathless as lots of comics.
[Laughs] Probably it depends on the form I?m writing in, because I?ve done a lot of done-in-one stuff as well. But of course, coming out the back of Gun Machine and being in the middle of a new novel right now, I?m very much in the novelistic mode. It?s nice to be able to do something in comics without having to watch the 22-page count. It?s not often I?ve done anything in comics where I wasn?t watching that count and trying to find the break for the end of the issues. I?ve done a few mini-series where I decided I just wasn?t going to pay that much attention to the break. But it?s very nice to do a comic of this size where you don?t really have to keep an eye on where you?re going to find the natural breaks.

On that topic of craft and just overall writing approach: What is a thing you would like to improve on at this stage of your career as far as the writing life? Is it a craft thing, a motivation thing? Maybe something about lifestyle or creating new patterns in your work? What is your artistic challenge?
Getting out of bed before noon. [Laughs] It?s an interesting question because it is the kind of thing that comes to you when you?re living in the second act of your career. I get to, in large part, to pick and choose what I?m going to do. And I look for things. So something like [Avengers XX], there is something of a technical challenge to get something that feels like a graphic novel out of these characters and that genre and trying to get a new sound out of it. That?s only part of what I?m doing right now. I?m testing myself in novels and I?m thinking about doing more comics work that would probably not be like a lot of the stuff I?ve done in previous years. So [the challenge]? Looking for the new things.

A huge difference between your novelist work and your comics work is collaboration; comics are an artist?s medium as surely as film is a director?s medium. That can be tricky. Do you consider yourself a natural collaborator?
It?s always an awkward area to question with the company-owned stuff because it does tend to get very separated out. I can be collaborative, for instance, in situations where I go and study the artist?s work before I start writing. Then I can at least try to write towards their style. At the top of the page I give them my email address and say,? For God?s sake, if something doesn?t work let me know.? So it?s not a classical collaboration. I?m the one starting off with a blank page but I?m not cutoff from the rest of the process; if something isn?t working for an artist they can come back to me. A big part of my job is make them look good because if the artist looks good than I look great.

When it comes to the voices of characters, do you find it a challenge to keep those voices different and distinct? And which is more difficult, finding characters that sound authentically different when they speak or getting in the head of characters who think differently than you yourself?
It?s a case of finding the characters, who they are, where they come from and what they want. That?s how I try to keep the voices straight. If I can keep those things in mind ? and it?s particularly hard with a job like this one because you are juggling seven characters ? but if you keep all of that in mind when they start to speak, you?re normally able to approximate the voices you should have. It?s always difficult with the superhero stuff because you?re working with?characters who have been written by 100 to 200 people over the past 20 years, at least, so they never sound the same or act the same. The best approach is to try to draw the best fitting line through all of the interpretations. And then find a note that sounds right to your ear.

Of the seven characters you have in this band of heroes ? is there one you have a special affinity for? Or one that irks you?
I largely got to choose the cast, but a big impetus to launching this line with these characters was largely commercial. Let?s be blunt. There?s a Thor movie and a Captain America movie coming up. So at the top of the process there was a request from the office that those two characters be front and center or at least have them be fairly integral to the plot. The rest of them I got to pick and choose, which is why the Captain Marvel character is in there, because she?s written by a friend of mine and I quite like her.. .I put Wolverine into the cast because that?s nothing you?ll see in the Avengers film, well not for 10 years at least.

Source: http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/03/27/avengers-marvel-graphic-novel-warren-ellis-endless-wartime/

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The Secret to Success in the Fast Food Sector

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
By George Leong, B.Comm. for Profit Confidential

Secret to SuccessMcDonalds Corporation (NYSE/MCD), a bellwether for the fast food industry, recently hit a barrier after coming in short on its earnings in both the second and third quarters. But the maker of the ?Big Mac? came back and beat the Thomson Financial consensus earnings-per-share (EPS) estimate in the fourth quarter. Like many of the fast food stocks, McDonalds has been feeling the pinch globally, seeing some pulling back in spending, especially in China and domestically. Or perhaps, consumers are becoming more health conscious and want to avoid fast foods, which is something McDonalds has acknowledged, as it?s working to deliver a healthier menu.

My stock analysis suggests that McDonalds has been the top performer in the restaurant sector over the past decade after the company made a dramatic shift in its menu to include an assortment of healthy meals to broaden its target market.

The stock chart of McDonalds below shows the company?s incredible and steady run since 2004 compared to the S&P 500, represented by the red line on the top of the chart, based on my technical analysis. McDonalds traded at a 52-week high on March 15, 2013.

MCD McDonalds Corp Stock chart

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

This strategy shift worked, as McDonalds continues to be at the top of the fast food chain and the ?Best of Breed,? leaving Burger King Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE/BKW) and The Wendys Company (NASDAQ/WEN) behind, according to my stock analysis.

McDonalds? comparable same-store sales in Europe fell 0.5% in February, which is not great. However, given the financial crisis over there, the numbers were not bad, based on my stock analysis, especially considering that same-store sales declined a much worse 3.3% in the U.S. market and 1.6% in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and African markets.

And based on my stock analysis, there?s a growing list of rivals that all have targeted McDonalds as the company to emulate in an attempt to take away its market share. But I doubt they will be able to knock McDonalds off its perch.

In the key and growing China fast food market, McDonalds operates about 1,500 stores (aiming for 2,000 by 2013), but my stock analysis indicates that the company faces tough competition from YUM! Brands (NYSE/YUM)?the operator of many well-known fast food outlets, such as Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), and Pizza Hut. YUM! is hesitating on the chart after reporting some stalling in sales, especially in its key and growing Chinese market. Based on my stock analysis, the lack of healthier alternatives on its stores? menus is one reason for this stalling. The biggest challenge for McDonalds in China could be Burger King, which announced it would open up 1,000 restaurants in China within five years. Again, a challenge, but I doubt the ?Whopper? will overtake the Big Mac, based on my stock analysis.

YUM Yum Brands Inc Stock market chart

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

So until there?s a real challenge, McDonalds will continue to be the top fast food stock to own. The company has proven it for the past 10 years, and nothing will change, according to my stock analysis.

Read about a good risk-to-reward travel stock in ?Play the Travel Space with This Former Highflier.?

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Source: http://www.profitconfidential.com/stock-market/the-secret-to-success-in-the-fast-food-sector/

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Watch: 'Kind Hearted Woman': Trailer

Home > Video > Most Popular

What Is That Red Equal Sign?

What Is That Red Equal Sign?

Social media reacts to the Supreme Court hearing gay marriage cases with a unique symbol.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/video/kind-hearted-woman-trailer-18826445

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Cypriot banks reopen after 12 days -- but customers can only withdraw $383 each

Yannis Behrakis / Reuters

A staff member of Laiki Bank, which is to be liquidated, tries to calm customers as the branch in Nicosia prepares to open.

By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News

Banks on the tax haven of Cyprus opened Thursday for the first time in 12 days amid the island's continuing financial crisis.

Strict limits on the amount of money that could be withdrawn have been imposed ? people will be able to withdraw 300 euros ($383) a day and no checks will be cashed ? amid fears of a run on the banks.

Account holders showed up hours before the banks were due to open to get in line.

Early indications were that there was no mass rush to withdraw cash, with just 13 people waiting outside one large Bank of Cyprus branch on the island as it opened at noon local time (6 a.m. ET). They were surrounded by a scrum of journalists.

?We need only from you cooperation, understanding and please patience,? the manager of the branch said before opening.

However a small crowd of people did press against the doors of a branch of Laiki Bank, which is being liquidated. CNBC sources estimate those with more than 100,000 euros (about $128,000) in accounts in Laiki Bank could lose 40 to 70 percent of their deposits.

During the banking shutdown, people could only withdraw 100 euros (about $127) a day from the country's two biggest banks, using ATMs.?Most who lined up for the opening Thursday were elderly people and those without ATM cards.?

Deposits above 100,000 euros with the Bank of Cyprus will be frozen and 40 percent of each account will be converted into bank stock. Accounts in both banks with balances under 100,000 euros will be fully protected.

A previous proposal to take less from all bank accounts?was vetoed by the Cypriot parliament.

The country is seeking to meet the terms of a bailout from the European Union of 10 billion euros ($12.9 billion) and, in order to raise enough funds to meet strict conditions imposed by the EU, it is preparing to take money from bank accounts.

CNBC's Michelle Caruso Cabrera reports on banks reopening in Cyprus and the limits they've imposed on depositors. The situation, she says, is calmer than expected.

Ahead of the banks? reopening, money was flown into the island and guards were seen delivering cash to banks in armored vehicles.

The banks were due to close at 6 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET).

There was some relief on the island that the banks were finally opening again, but this was mixed with fear about what could happen.

'Slow death'
Yorgos Georgiou, who owns a dry cleaning business in Nicosia, told Reuters that "finally people's mood will be lifted and we can start to trust the system again."

But he added: "I'm worried about the poor kids working in the cashiers today, because people might vent their anger at them. You can't predict how people will react after so many days."

Kostas Nikolaou, a 60-year-old retiree, told Reuters that the uncertainty of the past two weeks had been "like a slow death."

"How can they tell you that you can't access your own money in the bank? It's our money, we are entitled to it,? he added.

The country?s president, Nicos Anastasiades, has described the bailout deal as ?painful? but essential.

However, Nobel laureate economist Christopher Pissarides said it was ?extremely unfair to the little guy.?

?For the first time in the euro zone, depositors are (being) asked to bail out failing banks," he said. "Now that used to be the case in the 1930s, especially United States (and) caused big bank runs. It has been decided since then that we shouldn?t allow that to happen again.?

As Cyprus celebrates its Independence Day, the ?government is defending the last-minute bailout deal it's negotiated with the European Union. This means shutting down the country's second biggest bank, with big savers facing ?losses. ?ITV's Emma Murphy reports.

Among other controls, the island's central bank will review all commercial transactions over 5,000 euros and scrutinize transactions over 200,000 euros on an individual basis, Reuters reported. People leaving Cyprus can take only 1,000 euros with them. An earlier draft of the decree had put the figure at 3,000.

Reuters summed up the situation facing the island:

With just 860,000 people, Cyprus has about 68 billion euros in its banks - a vastly outsized financial system that attracted deposits from foreigners as an offshore haven but foundered after investments in neighboring Greece went sour.

The European Union and International Monetary Fund concluded that Cyprus could not afford a rescue unless it imposed losses on depositors, seen as anathema in previous euro zone bailouts.?The bailout looks set to push Cyprus deeper into an economic slump, shrink the banking sector and cost thousands of jobs.

European leaders said the bailout deal averted a chaotic national bankruptcy that might have forced Cyprus out of the euro.

Many Cypriots say the deal was foisted upon them by Cyprus's partners in the 17-nation euro zone within the European Union, and some have taken to the streets to vent their frustration.

CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and Katie Slaman, and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

Cypriots fear run on banks as branches prepare to reopen

Cypriots: Hope, but also fear they 'will be like slaves' to Russia

EU to Cypriots: Let us raid your savings or no bailout

This story was originally published on

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a1626f4/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C280C174975730Ecypriot0Ebanks0Ereopen0Eafter0E120Edays0Ebut0Ecustomers0Ecan0Eonly0Ewithdraw0E3830Eeach0Dlite/story01.htm

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

US eyes anti-piracy effort along west Africa coast

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. and some of its allies are considering plans to increase anti-piracy operations along Africa's west coast, spurred on by concerns that money from the attacks is funding a Nigerian-based insurgent group that is linked to one of al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliates.

Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated over the past year, and senior U.S. defense and counter-piracy officials say allied leaders are weighing whether beefed up enforcement efforts that worked against pirates off the Somalia coast might also be needed in the waters off Nigeria.

There has been growing coordination between Nigeria-based Boko Haram and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which was linked to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last September that killed four Americans, including the ambassador. Military leaders say AQIM has become the wealthiest al-Qaida offshoot and an increasing terrorist threat to the region.

It has long been difficult to track whether there are terrorist ties to piracy in the waters off Africa. But officials are worried that even if Boko Haram insurgents aren't directly involved in the attacks off Nigeria and Cameroon, they may be reaping some of the profits and using the money for ongoing terrorist training or weapons.

No final decisions have been made on how counter-piracy operations could be increased in that region, and budget restrictions could hamper that effort, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about emerging discussions between senior U.S. military commanders and other international leaders.

But officials say the solution could include continued work and counter-piracy training with African nations. The U.S. participated last month in a maritime exercise with European and African partners in the Gulf of Guinea.

"Maritime partnerships and maritime security and safety are increasingly important in the Gulf of Guinea region to combat a variety of challenges including maritime crime, illicit trafficking and piracy," said Gen. Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command.

In recent weeks, Ham and other U.S. military commanders have bluntly warned Congress that the terrorist threat from northern Africa has become far more worrisome.

"If the threat that is present in Africa is left unaddressed, it will over time grow to an increasingly dangerous and imminent threat to U.S. interests, and certainly could develop into a threat that threatens us in other places," Ham told Congress earlier this month. "We've already seen from some places in Africa, individuals that ? from Nigeria, for example ? attempt to enter our country with explosives."

Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts and kidnappings. Last year, London-based Lloyd's Market Association ? an umbrella group of insurers ? listed oil-rich Nigeria, neighboring Benin and nearby waters in the same risk category as Somalia.

Pirates have been more willing to use violence in their robberies, at times targeting the crew for ransom. And experts suggest that many of the pirates come from Nigeria, where corrupt law enforcement allows criminality to thrive and there's a bustling black market for stolen crude oil.

Typically, foreign companies operating in Nigeria's Niger Delta pay cash ransoms to free their employees after negotiating down kidnappers' demands. Foreign hostages can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.

Lately, however, the attacks, which had traditionally focused on the Nigerian coast, have spread, hitting ships carrying fuel from an Ivory Coast port. In January pirates made off with about $5 million in cargo from a fuel-laden tanker near the port of Abidjan, and two weeks later a French-owned fuel tanker was hijacked in the same area.

Just days after that, three sailors were kidnapped off a U.K.-flagged ship off the coast of Nigeria, and late in February six foreigners were taken off an energy company vessel in that same region.

The International Maritime Bureau has raised alarms about the Ivory Coast attacks, calling the first January incident a "potential game changer" in piracy in the region because was the farthest ever from Nigeria in the Gulf of Guinea. And U.S. Navy Capt. Dave Rollo, who directed the recent naval exercise in the Gulf of Guinea that involved as many as 15 nations, said piracy in that area is not just a regional crime issue, it's "a global problem."

Meanwhile, over the past year, piracy off Somalia's coast has plummeted, as the U.S.-led enforcement effort beefed up patrols and encouraged increased security measures on ships transiting the region. After repeated urgings from military commanders and other officials, shipping companies increased the use of armed guards and took steps to better avoid and deter pirates.

According to data from the combined maritime force, nearly 50 ships were taken by pirates in 2010 in the Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin and there were another close to 200 unsuccessful attempts. Last year, just seven ships were pirated there along with 36 failed attacks.

Even as defense officials warn about the growing threat, they acknowledge that increasing counter-piracy operations around the Gulf of Guinea presents a number of challenges.

In recent weeks, the U.S. Navy has had to postpone or cancel a number of ship deployments because of budget cuts, including a decision not to send the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman to the Persian Gulf. The U.S. has maintained two carrier groups in the Gulf for much of the past two years, as tensions with Iran have escalated.

U.S. Africa Command has no ships of its own, so any U.S. vessels needed for operations would have to come from other places, such as Europe or America.

And defense officials also note that it may be difficult to build as much international interest in the Gulf of Guinea attacks as those in the more heavily traveled shipping lanes on the northeastern side of the continent.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-eyes-anti-piracy-effort-along-west-africa-151649714--politics.html

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Schneier on Security: Our Internet Surveillance State


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A blog covering security and security technology.

? Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Genetics | Main | Identifying People from Mobile Phone Location Data ?

Our Internet Surveillance State

I'm going to start with three data points.

One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks.

Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up.

And three: Paula Broadwell, who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels -- and hers was the common name.

The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell's identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources.

Facebook, for example, correlates your online behavior with your purchasing habits offline. And there's more. There's location data from your cell phone, there's a record of your movements from closed-circuit TVs.

This is ubiquitous surveillance: All of us being watched, all the time, and that data being stored forever. This is what a surveillance state looks like, and it's efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell.

Sure, we can take measures to prevent this. We can limit what we search on Google from our iPhones, and instead use computer web browsers that allow us to delete cookies. We can use an alias on Facebook. We can turn our cell phones off and spend cash. But increasingly, none of it matters.

There are simply too many ways to be tracked. The Internet, e-mail, cell phones, web browsers, social networking sites, search engines: these have become necessities, and it's fanciful to expect people to simply refuse to use them just because they don't like the spying, especially since the full extent of such spying is deliberately hidden from us and there are few alternatives being marketed by companies that don't spy.

This isn't something the free market can fix. We consumers have no choice in the matter. All the major companies that provide us with Internet services are interested in tracking us. Visit a website and it will almost certainly know who you are; there are lots of ways to be tracked without cookies. Cell phone companies routinely undo the web's privacy protection. One experiment at Carnegie Mellon took real-time videos of students on campus and was able to identify one-third of them by comparing their photos with publicly available tagged Facebook photos.

Maintaining privacy on the Internet is nearly impossible. If you forget even once to enable your protections, or click on the wrong link, or type the wrong thing, and you've permanently attached your name to whatever anonymous service you're using. Monsegur slipped up once, and the FBI got him. If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, we've got no hope.

In today's world, governments and corporations are working together to keep things that way. Governments are happy to use the data corporations collect -- occasionally demanding that they collect more and save it longer -- to spy on us. And corporations are happy to buy data from governments. Together the powerful spy on the powerless, and they're not going to give up their positions of power, despite what the people want.

Fixing this requires strong government will, but they're just as punch-drunk on data as the corporations. Slap-on-the-wrist fines notwithstanding, no one is agitating for better privacy laws.

So, we're done. Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does. Welcome to a world where your cell phone company knows exactly where you are all the time. Welcome to the end of private conversations, because increasingly your conversations are conducted by e-mail, text, or social networking sites.

And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at will without a warrant.

Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we've ended up here with hardly a fight.

This essay previously appeared on CNN.com, where it got 23,000 Facebook likes and 2,500 tweets -- by far the most widely distributed essay I've ever written.

Commentary.

Posted on March 25, 2013 at 6:28 AM ? 52 Comments

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i read this when it was posted on CNN - great article bruce.

i am very much against this ubiquitous surveillance that you speak of and do my best to avoid it. it is surprising how common it is for me to encounter people who think that i'm "paranoid" for believing that literally _everything_ you do online is recorded, both by local intelligence services and myriad advertising companies. i would not be one bit surprised if nearly all data i have ever sent to or received from the internet (since the 90s) is recorded somewhere in an underground facility.

in terms of dealing with privacy, the only real means left to individuals is to make a best-effort to encrypt everything, e.g your comms and hard drives. it is not reasonable to believe that a government legislative body is going to move quickly enough to legislate privacy online, much less enforce it. privacy legislation has been tried and all it results in is intelligence services gaming the definition of the word "capture" or routing your traffic outside your country for 1 hop so it is now foreign-sourced and avoids the letter of the law. as such, the only real option you have for increasing your own privacy is to DIY.

You left out your time at work (tracked by your employer & shared), telephone records (land line), your checking account, GPS car tracking, and TV viewing. Maybe that was all included in the ubiquitous reference.

I bet this includes all of those people that are doing the tracking and the data reporting (that should make them think about what they are doing to themselves). How about Congress, the Supreme Court, the Administration, Federal employees, and all police/military including the spy agency employees. Well, there has got to be a list to that includes who NOT to surveil.

"This essay previously appeared on CNN.com, where it got 23,000 Facebook likes and 2,500 tweets -- by far the most widely distributed essay I've ever written."

Isn't it ironic. One must purposefully engage in the Surveillance State in order to dissemate an essay about it!

On the commentary site by Robert X. Cringely (the very last link, pointing to InfoWorld), the ever-so-handy Ghostery plugin informs me that it found and blocked 17 trackers.

On this site, it found nothing to block.

Speaks volumes, dunnit?

As usual, you sum up the situation pretty clearly. Hat tip to you sir.

Following the reasoning of Liars and Outliers, what do you think can be done to change the reasons behind this surveillance, thus making it unnecessary?

For example, if the main reason is advertising, a voluntary database of personal data available for free to everyone would take away any value from our browsing habits. Yes, that is a provocatory statement :)

How about making everything public - including data about government officers and corporations - by law? I mean knowing the personal data of those who check your personal data. Re-thinking the meaning of "national security" and "state secret" completely.

Will we reach a state of 'mutually assured cyber destruction' - where every time citizen's data is used by large corporations and governments, the citizens retaliate by making their secrets public, a-la wikileaks?

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, but perhaps we're looking at it from the wrong point of view. The privacy battle is lost; what's the next battlefield? Does fighting make sense anyways?

More on this on my blog

Really great summary.

Unsure if or when mainstream end users will understand the impact from big data and analytics. Privacy concerns alone may never completely change this point of view for some, as for some a common response is "if I am not doing anything wrong, then it does not matter". Most of the news media examples of the impact of collected data usage is where someone was suspected of wrong doing. What mom and pop need to hear is the long term impact it may have on them.

Another angle may be the financial side, comparing ones 'data' to the mineral rights under their property. Most understand not to give this away, if they own it.

So what you're saying is "Privacy is dead ? get over it!"?

And the consequences have been? For most of human history "privacy" has been a privilege reserved for the well-off as most people lived in crowded group settings. Since the 1950's aren't coming back you can either retard productivity gains and go back to living in a small apartment with 15 people spanning 3 generations or just deal with the fact that Google knows what p0rn people like.

@Smee Jenkins

The real question becomes, will using anti-tracking tools like ghostery or TOR let you become a Stainless Steel Rat (nod to the fiction of Harry Harrison) and drop beneath such notice, or will it flag your presence, making you shine like a beacon, or perhaps substitute "terrorist" for "beacon". Or will it just flag you as "One of those tin-foil hatters." Getting tagged as a "harmless ignorable nut-job" might suffice.

No, not at all.

But what experts see and understand is may not be what mom and pop see or interpret. Mom and pop can happily give up privacy if they see value (i.e. auto insurance add on electronics to track their car and driving habits, or a 10% off retail coupon). Their view can be, good for me, bad for the criminals.

My point is the media discussion needs to address the mom and pop level, so they better understand the long term cumulative effect it may have on them (i.e. health insurance may be denied or rates increased based on collected data internet data).

I'm wondering if there is at least a small partial solution in gaming the system somehow. Is there a way a contingent of savvy programmers could come up with a bevvy of solutions to introduce large quantities of false data into a lot of systems making the data less and less valuable.

Just a thought.

P2P development nullifies this spying thats why the Silk Rd is still around. Patreus used bad tradecraft, and Sabu screwed up more than just once by the time he logged into IRC in the clear agents were already sitting on his place. People had figured out his FB profile weeks before.

It seems easier than ever to me for a criminal to hide from tracking/feds if they use good opsec. You used to have to be a fairly decent hacker to not get traced, now any idiot can use Tor and as long as they practice good opsec nobody is gonna find you. Lots of other hackers in that Snitchbu IRC channel that werent caught.

Its also easier to create phony identities online and trick the spies sent after you with a deep layer of fake social media accounts. Some of the hackers did this and when Lulzsec was busted and it worked, nobody has yet found them.

Tax reports, credit reports, license plate scanners, highway toll passes, airline tickets, passports and Onstar GPS, store discount cards and the vehicle data collected when you have your oil changed.

Hell, just looking at seller / buyer feedback on eBay will tell you a great deal.

A poit that seams lost on many people,

TOR is at best content secure whilst the content circulates within the TOR network.

If you are daft enough to think it offers anything more than that then you need to sit down and have a quite think about things such as Traffic Analysis and what bread crumbs you leave on the site you connect to from a TOR exit node.

Then there is the isssue of network pinch points, that is you might thing the TOR nodes you are using are in many countries or juresdictions But... The real problem is that places like Australia act as pinch points where your TOR traffic passes through on both the inbound and outbound leg to a node. But the chances are it also has both legs for all TOR nodes in the global region.

Untill people understand that TOR has serious issues with network topology, the lack of deliberate stor-n-forward latency and the lack of channel stuffing dummy traffic then they have little hope of understanding just how easily traffiic annalysiis etc can be used against them.

Covert communications that are traffic analysis proof are quiite difficult to set up and securely maintain. The military gave up on this a long time ago and went for overt communications links that use end to end encryption as well as link encryption with channel sstuffing with dummy traffic and quite deliberate latency with nodes with human operators doing store-n-forward activities.

As they say,

"You pays your money and you makes your choice"

Me I know when I'm best keeping my money in my pocket...

@ Bruce,

This is what a surveillance state looks like and it's efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell.

It may well be "efficient" beyond Orwell's technical foresight, but it is in keeping with his general vision.

However it certainly is well beyond the wildest dreams of various dictators such as Stalin and many others.

Back around the time of 9/11 I noted that general or populous wide surveillance historicaly had shown a different behaviour in closed and open societies.

In closed societies it naturaly ramped up on a curve similar to that of the voltage on a charging capacitor, and aproached but never quite reached a level where the cost became prohibitive. The starting point was usually around the time that a single person ammased enough political power to make it feasible.

However in an open society whilst targeted surveillance for political and criminal reasons were rife general surveillance was not. It usually took a significant change such as "going to war" to start it. However once started it usually followed a sawtooth type behaviour, that is it ramped up under political imperitive and sank back as the prohibitive costs effected the economy and other political priorities.

What I also noted at the time was that the prohibitive cost was changing due to the rapidly depreciating cost of technology and that it was since the mid 1990's possible for commercial organisations such as marketing companies to actually store sufficient information to make it worthwhile to do so on individuals.

The important point is that the depreciating cost due to the rapid reduction in technology prices has in effect removed the "prohibitive cost" ceiling on general surveillance. And also opened "revenue generating" oportunities, not just for private companies but Governments as well. In effect it has alowed Governments to start moving from a tax only revenue model to a tax and fines revenue model.

Importantly I expect this new "fines" revenue model to increase rapidly due to the fact that the depreciating cost of technology has alowed many large organisations to virtualise themselves off shore and thus significantly if not totaly removing their tax liability and thus unprofitable payments.

Great article, but it sounds like you've thrown in the towel. There's a lot that people can do to protect their personal privacy: (1) use a privacy enhancing proxy chain with both squid and privoxy, and send all your traffic through that. Squid denies access to a bunch of http headers and Privoxy does a great job blocking all ads as well as forges HTTP_REFERER [sic] and the User Agent; (2) jailbreak all your iOS devices and install the Cydia tools Firewall iP that controls all outgoing traffic (just like OS X's Little Snitch) and allows you to block in-app ads as well as turn off in-app spyware if you take the trouble to figure out where all those connections are going; (3) install Mobile Tor, which runs a Tor+Polipo proxy chain on the iPhone/iPad?you just proxy everything through 127.0.0.1:8118, and you have Tor on iOS; (4) install OpenVPN on your mobile devices and host your own private VPN server to use whenever you're off the LAN.

The EFF has a useful little service called the SSL Observatory to study internet certificates. It would be great to have a EFF service "Tracker Observatory" that helps identify which apps are communicating with which IPs using which protocol -- this information could then be used to selectively block undesired activities on mobile devices.

I have tentatively concluded there is no point in pursuing privacy; on the theory that it is a battle already lost.

Instead, I think the fight we should be pursuing now is our rights to benefit from the data that is being collected. So I would recommend we pursue these steps: (1) Make recording mandatory; (2) make access to personal data mandatory for the person and also via legal process.

I'll get to those steps in more detail, but first I would note that these are intended to address asymmetries in access. Take a call from almost any company nowadays and you often hear, "Your call may be recorded for..." Weasel words aside, that means they are recording your call; if you don't believe it, just try to deny you bought something for $1000 (they'll produce the recording in court). But let's say the phone rep decides to pad his bottom line by pushing $2000 in add-ons you didn't approve. You sue to get that refunded and guess what? Magically, that recording doesn't exist; isn't that odd? That is an asymmetry: A recording that exists to protect the company, but "magically" disappears when I need it for my protection.

So that is what the two steps that follow do: They enforce symmetric access. Since I have lost my privacy to their recordings, I should be able to benefit from those recordings every bit as much as they do.

Step 1 relates to denial: Right now, the NSA and others record the data, but deny they are doing any such thing. So we make it mandatory that they record; and back that up with automatic penalties if they deny having a recording (if they don't have the recording, they are not doing their mandated duty). It's not just government either; as I noted in "asymmetries" above, companies also can deny. So, mandate recording; so they (government, company) can't deny having what the law requires them to have.

Step 2 relates to access: Since you have your microscope on my life and are recording everything I do, I should be entitled to benefit from that recording just as much as you. If it is about me personally, it should be automatically accessible on request; it should be illegal for company or government to deny me access. Fees and "red tape" should be very sharply restricted: with cost of storage in the tenths of millicents per kilobyte, computer processor time approximately the same, and the bandwidth that exists today, there should be no grounds for punitive restrictions to my access to my data. (If it's about someone else, then it should be accessible by legal process; I have to get a judge to sign off.)

As I noted at the start, I think the privacy battle is lost. Let's get on with the next battle, which we might be able to win: Symmetric access.

I don't know if I want to give up my private nerdy Bruce for the CNN rockstar Bruce.

Just one word of advice: DO NOT DATE TAYLOR SWIFT.

Great essay, btw.

There have been lots of people fighting, but it's been like standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Surveillance, like the rest of the internet, routes around points of failure.

@lorenzo: "How about making everything public - including data about government officers and corporations - by law?"

+1 ! That would make many types of fraud impossible (food industry, ...)

The situation is not so hopeless. You need to have faith that people simply do not like their lives exposed. Like anything else, this will be cyclical. Currently, hardly anyone is even aware that all of these privacy-invading practices are occurring behind the scenes. Better to work with politicians, etc, than to feel helpless.

Whenever I tell people about the new global spy regime they dont care "go ahead and track me I have nothing to hide" then they beg me to help them with all the targeted email and sms spam, phonecalls and mailings they dont want. A few them got fired too for some minor facebook mistake and now they realize what a problem it is

Don't forget that health insurnace and medical providers are now "big data" companies. I remember my mum taking me to the docotor, wiriting a check and expecting that the records would stay in their office.

By contrast, I received a prescription inhaler when I had a cold last year. About a week later, I started getting mail from my insurer asking me to enroll in a program to "better manage my asthma."

Employer-provided wellness plans are also another service where you are the product. Some of them would probably be profitable to run without collecting any fees, just reselling the data.

I'm not sure if it's more disturbing for a data aggregate to know what type of porn you watch, or how frequently you urinate.

Arclight

The availability of information traditionally considered private finds a loose parallel with satellite imagery, communication networks, and other public infrastructure and information that might help the bad guys. In that case, the answer was to make sure such availability helps the good guys more.

It'd be puerile to equate protection of privacy with counterterrorism, but it feels like they have similar themes regarding the asymmetry of information. Schneier has admonished us for years not to consider secrecy, or obscurity, as synonymous with security. Is it worth supposing that secrecy may also not be quite the same thing as privacy?

The phone customer in Coyne Tibbet's example has lost the secrecy of his or her purchase, and with it what has traditionally called privacy. But Coyne's proposal of symmetric access reduces the power that the company holds over this individual. That might cushion the blow a bit, because the main threat posed by the non-public phone recording is the power imbalance it creates.

More generally, we're going to need a more detailed characterization of what privacy means. It's a picture that might vary widely from one person to another. Furthermore, privacy is one of those things that also helps the bad guys. Still, we might together come up with a model of privacy that captures its important essence in the language of threats that can be addressed with security philosophy.

For example, I value my privacy for at least the following reasons: I don't want to be bothered in a personal way by people or marketing entities I don't know; I don't want to be at a disadvantage during a job interview or other business deal due to details I justifiably deem irrelevant; I would like the option of compartmentalizing my life so that one pursuit can be experienced independently of the others. That's just off the top of my head.

Secrecy would achieve these ends, if it could be kept up. But we've gotten to a point where the simple living of a life, like the normal operation of a security mechanism, "leaks" information about its internal operation to the outside world, so that obscurity can't be trusted to provide any appreciable defense. Maybe, just maybe, ubiquitous surveillance that has been coerced into a symmetric publically-available form by suitable activism might provide a means to achieve the same privacy-related needs as secrecy once did. Maybe it's a mutually-assured-exposure kind of thing, or maybe it's something new and altogether more nuanced. Maybe it isn't privacy that's being eroded, but only the ability of secrecy to achieve it. Sure, it feels like a retreat, but I'll bet that's how it feels when a less savvy security vendor is asked to use a published algorithm. One day we might reminisce about the days when we all used to advocate "privacy by obscurity".

And then I can quit avoiding Facebook and gain the benefits of using that platform.

> "Whenever I tell people about the new global spy regime they dont care 'go ahead and track me I have nothing to hide'"

Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams

One poster said he had already archived 200GB of webcam material from his slaves. "Mostly I pick up the best bits (funny parts, the 'good' [sexual] stuff) and categorize them (name, address, passwords etc.), just for funsake," ? As another poster put it in a thread called ? ShowCase ? Girl Slaves On Your RAT, "We are all going to hell for this..." But he followed it with a smiley face. ? Even when their activities trip a victim's webcam light and the unsettled victim reaches forward to put a piece of tape over the webcam, the basic attitude is humorous?Ha! You got us! On to the next slave! And there are plenty of slaves.

@Mike B

"...for most of human history..."

The flaw in this argument is that for most of human history individual identity was not as tightly separated from communal identity, and most communities were only up to about 300 people (i.e. enough that you personally knew everyone who knew or might know your secrets).

In modern society the people that know your secrets are watching "communities" of millions, and are completely separated from personal interaction with the majority of them.

Bruce, I believe you've disagreed about this before, but, if privacy is no more, might it be time to think about transparency (as some comments above seem to suggest)?

Chuck Norris' regeneration into Private James Frazer is proceeding as planned.

I'm sure you would feel much better if you had a shave Bruce.

Ok I give up. My real name is Funsuk Wangdu...

BTW what's up with Bruce, sounds very downbeat lately...

I did look for a good VPN provider a while back but couldn't find one I would consider more trustworthy than my ISP...

Society took a big wrong turn when we allowed surveillance as a business model in the first place.

There is a peculiar weirdness in US culture where an assumption seems to prevail that it must be OK if it is only done for profit.

Yet, it is really obvious that Governments will want, be inspired by and ultimately force access to anything private entities collect.

Somehow this just skipped off the public's consciousness. Only in the US could this blase attitude and crazy situation gotten such a strong foot hold.

How on earth could surveillance as a business model not end in a world of pain for many?

It is also an economic disaster, as it legitimises man in the middle attacks on large amounts of culture itself. Once you can target the individual, then what need have they for culture?

It used to be that advertisers had to help fund culture as they had the audience, so needed to cooperate. Now they can monetise sharing without regards to creators, nor the quality of content (click harvesting, headline gaming, simple memes is enough). Giving advertisers an audience of one is a disaster for any culture business, especially quality journalism.

I really don't understand why the media didn't oppose targeted advertising right from early on? They surely must have known individual targeting would be a disaster for anything but the lowest quality content.

What options might we have to combat this? One idea comes to my mind: deliberately poisoning the well and then hoping that you yourself get lost in the flood of data. Is this very feasible? And how would one go about poisoning the well of data in the corpus at these various organizations that love to Big Brother us for fun and profit?

Yes, but they are not very good at it. I have seen some profiles of myself on internet sites that show snippets of a profile of you when you put in your name and hometown in Google. My name is a fairly common one, but I am alleged to have relatives that I have never heard of (my cousin recently published a book that traced my surname going back to the mid 1700s and I'm about 100% sure of who my relatives are, as well as the names of the people who I have lived with for all of my adult life. These online profiles indicate that there are 20 or so individuals who I am supposedly associated with or have been associated with who I have never met and know I will never meet. I have never ordered the profile that one pays money to obtain because I am certain that the profile would be as corrupt as the small amount of information that is shown about me online.

I once was a law clerk for a lawyer who became the President of the Trial Lawyers Association of America (before they changed their name). Suppose I find out that some of these people named as having lived in a household with me are criminals. Would I have a case for libel and/or slander?

One problem with the security state is that it is no better than the people who run it., And from what I have seen, many of those companies must be grossly incompetent and negligent in their data collection methods. Can I expect the state to do a better job of data collection than these private companies?

Coyne Tibbets' comment could work and seems worthy of further exploration. The best way to fight fascists has always been to give them exactly what they are asking for.

I'll bet that if companies were forced to collect and save all that data, AND be ready at any time to answer any individual's request for that data, with the threat of jail hanging over each company's board and C-suite, then there would be a big change in how corporations would treat the data they are collecting.

So the fight now isn't about privacy. As others have said, it's about controlling your personal data.

@ Big Brother,

I really don't understand why the media didn't oppose targeted advertising right from early on They surely must have known individual targeting would be a disaster for anything but the lowest quality content

The answer to this is complex but can be explained more simply explained by examining the personalities involved.

The problem arises with Rupert Murdoch his out of date understanding of the way the news world now works and his not so bright children and the fact that News International share holders were happy to keep their eyes of the ball and just let the Murdochs dribble as they saw fit...

If you go back a little while in time you will see that the Murdoch's tried to jump on the Internet bandwaggon with the view that they could Buy In success and treat it just like they had their more traditional and antique media outlets and business models.

Needless to say this has proved to be an unprofitable way of proceading.

The Murdoch's appear to have belived that rather than the marketers providing personalised advertising they would act as a conduit where NI in effect owned the content consumers and acted as the gateway to them and NI would do the personalisation as a significantly payed for service to the marketers....

In other words it was just a rehash of the "walled garden" idea that had failed by the mid 90's. And the Murdoch's rather than wake up and smell the coffee persisted in sniffing the poppy smoke of their self enforced "perfumed garden" prison.

Rupert decided that as the rats were leaving the overly expensive garden NI had purchased, they would have to be herded back into another garden. Sadly for NI this idea turned out to be yet another ship destined for a watery grave. Basicaly Rupert assumed people could be fleaced ttwice, once for accessing his news services via pay walls and secondly by the targetted marketing idea.

Needless to say with fairly powerfull free search engines any news that NI journos wrote up would in all likelyhood be available from another news media outlet without paywalls (unless the journos had sole access to a source without the source being aware ie as in the News of The World and other titles using payed "private eyes" that used unethical or illegal methods such as phone hacking to access source information).

So the Murdoch solution was to have an arrangement with a major search engine service. And as expected this suffered from the same old revers midas touch that the Murdochs appeared to be having with the Internet.

Oh the latest wheeze is for NI to supply schools with free learning pads that in effect are tied into Murdoch services. Only time will tell if this turns out to be another monument to the internet success that so alludes the Murdochs or actually makes a profit.

I'm glad this essay was posted; I wanted to respond since reading it on cnn.com.

While I agree with most of the points, I'm not sure why the essay focuses on "the Internet" or why this was posed as a new phenomenon. Brick-and-mortar companies have been doing this kind of tracking for years. If anything the Internet has made this kind of tracking more transparent than before.

When I worked at Time Inc. several years ago, one of the biggest print innovations was the ability to target magazine editions down to a ZIP+4 level. In other words, it was possible to create custom magazines for a single street. The magazines delivered to households were correlated with demographic data collected via any number of methods, buying trends from credit cards, and viewing behaviors from television. This would allow advertisers to precisely target their goods towards a specific household or group of households.

Similarly, other brick-and-mortar groups have created similar profiles of consumers. As others have reported, the "discount card" trend at supermarkets and drug stores have less to do with customer loyalty and more to do with tracking consumer spending and buying habits. When combines with the use of a credit card, it becomes trivial to correlate personal information with those buying trends.

Credit card purchase information is readily available from credit card companies. Your television viewing information is readily available from cable providers. Your travel information may be sold by airlines and hotels. Restaurants will track your favorite foods and will makes notes on your behavior. There is nothing stopping brick-and-mortar companies from using image recognition to pick out your face in a crowd or to identify your license plate in a parking lot. [Interestingly, while video rental information is protected by federal law; c.f. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act . Yet there is no similar protection for tracking other goods and services.]

The vast majority of purchases occur offline; the majority of my life occurs offline. Yet it feels like modern privacy advocates are more concerned about online tracking than the ubiquitous and unpublished surveillance of our daily lives and habits.

[These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.]

"This isn't something the free market can fix. We consumers have no choice in the matter."

Consumers do have a choice if this feature is so important to them. And there is no reason to think that corporations wouldn't provide them as part of competitive process (we have more privacy than Google, see DuckDuckGo).


"where the government accesses it at will without a warrant."

To me this is the part that is worrying, because individuals cannot opt-out.
I can choose not to use Google or be tracked by Google by using a browser plugin to block any site which has a beacon, social tracker or ad from Google.
Also, government has the unique ability to correlate information across companies.

Finally, you still need to explain what harm Google can do with the information, and what happens to Google if they did abuse it (PR hit, lost market share, lawsuit if breached privacy policy).
Contrast that with the harm government can do with this information, and the consequences there.
Then you may reconsider your suggestion that "fixing this requires strong government will".

The problem with encryption is that a) it does make you stand out and b) in some countries it's a crime to not reveal the decryption key.

Data transmission is cheap.

So the solution is to just slosh around random data. Flood the system with noise. Make it useless. Regularly email completely random data to complete strangers. Sounds like spam, but that's how surveillance will be defeated.

That it provides a back-channel is just a bonus - well-encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data, and through a side channel one can pass a key (eg. a card with two hexadecimal numbers on it passed off in a park. Those two numbers are the first four bytes of the two "random" messages to be XORed together to get the "real" message...)

J.

"This isn't something the free market can fix."

There is an oversimplification here loses some important details. The reason a free market can operate against privacy is that In a free market, a business that has more ways of turning a profit on the same interaction (e.g. gathering and selling or otherwise profiting from personal information revealed by normal transactions), will out-compete a business that doesn't, so in the absence of legal restrictions, we can expect a loss of privacy in many cases.

However, if a business can charge enough extra for a 'privacy-enhanced' service to cover what they'd be getting from data resale, etc., then the free market can offer alternatives. We actually see this in action, where hotels that host illicit activity don't ask for ID and deal in cash (probably charging more than an equivalent room would cost in a regular hotel), and black and gray markets both offer anonymous and untraceable transactions for a substantial mark-up.

The problems with offering privacy enhancements in a mainstream, legal market are that 1) there has to be a market for marginally improved privacy at the price it would actually cost, 2) the marginal improvements have to be trustworthy enough that people will pay money for them, and 3) the means of improving privacy and demonstrating trustworthiness have to be legal.

All three of those conditions tend to have problems, both direct and indirect. Added to these are the tendencies for customers to resent being charged extra for privacy (people who want it think pricing shouldn't reflect it), and for society to stigmatize people who want it enough to pay for it.

I had the same idea that Zombie John posted. Flood the 'system' with so much useless, nay, worse than useless data that it's not worth doing anymore.

This even gives you plausible deniability: "I wasn't checking out pr0nham$terzzmakemetingle.com, it was my browser's privacy obfuscation plug-in-matic!"

I feel fortunate in the few ways in which I am a little less 'on the radar.'

1 - No longer receiving salary - credit report fading away
2 - Living mostly outside of the U.S.
3 - Pre-paid anonymous SIM cards in foreign countries - both cell and data
4 - Regularly changing street and IP addresses

None of that is done with an intention to maintain privacy, it's just a byproduct of living cheaply overseas. If someone is proceeding from "Where is Glenn right now?" then they will find me. I'm not hiding. If someone is proceeding from "Who is this accessing such-and-such site?" then I'm not so easy to find.

And since I file taxes and follow most rules and generally keep my nose clean I don't anticipate problems. I do, however, worry sometimes when I become interested in a cause. I generally support much of what Anonymous does, and Adbusters, OWS, and the rights of indigenous peoples (think Zapatistas). And I frequent Greenwald and Schneier articles...hmmm

A quick point to @stvs - while there are lots of technical means to increase privacy, almost all are beyond the grasp of the masses. There will always be a select few that know how to be incognito, but simply pointing at techie tools misses @Bruce's point.

@Glenn

The problem with an Internet Surveillance State (should I say Information Surveillance State?) isn't that they can find specific persons, it's they can track anyone all the time.
The disturbing part is that somewhere, some computer has already correlated your location, tax filings, IP addresses and online behavior.
Btw. that anonymous pre-paid SIM card isn't going to be anonymous if you the data can be linked to your profile. Apparently, if you connect even once to a monitored IRQ chatroom your busted. ;)

A while ago I watched an interview with the producer of the TV show Person of Interest (think Echelon++), who said that the premise of the show was interesting to explore, but quickly added that in reality technology hasn't progressed far that far. Really made me laugh. Granted, fully working AI systems like in POI or Eagle Eye (movie) are unlikely to exist, but the surveillance, storage and analysis systems have existed for years, if not decades.

The biggest problem is web browsers. The security landscape of "the web" (browsers) is insane, and leaking privacy is not the only thing they do.

Get rid of third-party "inline" content, form submissions, and cross-site scripting and 50% of the privacy issues disappear overnight - the other 50% are manageable.

@ pfogg,

Added to these are the tendencies for customers to resent being charged extra for privacy (people who want it think pricing shouldn't reflect it), and for society to stigmatize people who want it enough to pay for it.

I think you are not quite expressing this in the way quite a few people view it. That is they object to having to pay to stop being abused.

That is they view the "privacy charge" as equivalent to an extorted "protection payment" for which there is anti racketering legislation in many jurisdictions.

The real issue that needs to be fixed (and it won't due to lobbying) is who owns Person Identifing Information (PII).

In the US the law is such that the effect is "who ever collects it own's it" (unless there is a pre-agreed contract in place). In most other parts of the world it is a lot less clear cut, in that the legislation either does not exist or offeres only weak protectiion and remedies (see EU legislation and contrast it with member countries legislation).

Another issue is what is PII in it's various forms. Technicaly in most countries you don"t actually own your own name, and you almost certainly don"t own the address of where you live, though you are often given the historic courtesy of being able to name the building (but not in all cases).

In the UK this has led to what appears to be quite ludicrous court decisions where people have "modified" their given name to track down who is selling their name/address for the purposes of advertising. Apparently the reason being is there is a legal requirment to correctly register your name at an address for the purposes of voting, and this then becomes a matter of the public record via the "electoral role" which is maintained for open public use. Which has unfortunatly allowed Credit Checking and other similar organisations to amass these public records and sell them for a profit.

The only way I can see to put the privacy genie back in the bottle is for legislation to remove any potential profit in maintaining databases of PII and imposing heavy fines on those that do and misuse the data. The reason for not making such lists illegal is of course employment records, club membership lists, university and other education roles, etc. etc. are required.

In theory (only) we have such protections in the UK but they don't work because of the 'monopoly supplier' issue.

Take Transport for London (TfL) and it's Oyster Card system. In theory it's a non mandatory system, that is you don't have to have a card therefore don't have to comply with their draconian terms and conditions (set up by the "control freak" Ken Livingston), but that's not the way it works in practice.

Getting around London by any other means than public transport has penalties. Even walking means you are under constant surveillance, riding a pushbike of your own has all sorts of issues to do with a lack of secure storage. And just about anything with a motor in it has to be licenced and thus carries a licence plate and has to be registered with TfL for the purposes of the Congestion Charge (even if the vehicle is exempt) and parking is highly restricted especialy in Westminster.

Thus as an adult even if you are disabled you are in effect forced onto public transport in London and thus fall under the surveillance web that is the Oyster Card system (yes you can pay cash but they are shutting down ticket offices and the machines when functioning are programed to not offer the full range of fares etc, so the cost quickly becomes prohibitive to all but a few and the inconveniance immense).

But if you are young it is even more draconian and as a result has become subject to abusive and legaly questionable mission creep.

Basicaly TfL insist on all people under 11years old must be accompanied by an adult (this is legaly questionable as legal responsability starts at age 10). If over 11years old but not an adult (ie 18 or over) they insist on proof of age with photo identification even if the non adult has a method of paying for the transport.

Worse the Met Police have free and easy access to the Oyster card Data Base (which is realy questionable). The result is "mission creep" in that in many areas of London it is now in effect de jure for non adults to carry their non adult Oyster card with photo and all their other details. This is to avoid being given a very hard time by Met Police officers if stoped as often happens in these areas. The result is some Met Police officers regard the non carrying of what is in effect a back door Identity Card by non adults as an indicator that the person is upto no good and thus subject them to unwarranted attention, detention and in some cases abuse of their rights (ie being questioned without a non police adult present).

Basicaly all aggregations of PII will become targets for direct profit or indirect profit via "efficiency savings". As I noted above such DBs are a gold mine for Gov's as they are forced to move from a tax revenue system to a fine based revenue system due to the tax base losses technology has given to major (now) "international" companies that have virtulised their structure into one or more "tax efficient" schemes run from various tax havens etc.

Bruce,

Do you think that our web histories internal to the United States are being tracked as well? It seems to be the elephant in the room that I've yet to hear be done (outside of the auto opt-in for Verizon wireless customers).

There seems to be room for Bitmessage:

https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page

Bitmessage is a P2P communications protocol used to send encrypted messages to another person or to many subscribers. It is decentralized and trustless, meaning that you need-not inherently trust any entities like root certificate authorities. It uses strong authentication which means that the sender of a message cannot be spoofed, and it aims to hide "non-content" data, like the sender and receiver of messages, from passive eavesdroppers like those running warrantless wiretapping programs.

Excellent article, forwarded, but:

1. Sabu was caught despite using Tor, etc. Sabu was a highly wanted criminal who made a lot of enemies. He was caught because there were dedicated people even in his own circle who wanted to catch him. These people were willing to do the footwork because they were against him, but even moreso, because they were literally threatened by him.

I do find the Sabu story suspicious, in general. For instance, with the Stratfor hack, he was under surveillance already. Why did the FBI let him give those orders to continue it?

2. Patreus' affair was caught because he was the director of the CIA. That is how the FBI could justify resources used in the investigation. They thought he was a target. Turned out, he was just having an affair.

3. The Chinese hackers were targets, like Sabu, of a massive manhunt. They were serially hacking major corporations and government. The people who found them knew they would have a huge reward awaiting for them in terms - at least - of business prestige.

They were involved in mass hacking, and were sloppy. If there were more people tracking them down who could speak mandarin, they likely could have been caught earlier. Probably, a lot more is known about these groups by governments and contractors which is not exposed to the public because it is in the realm of counterintelligence.

I am not saying that people should not f33r for their privacy. And there are many disturbing trends out there. But, note, I am also critical of the counterterrorism TSA moves. Overreaction to a singular event, where Bruce well points out more people die in car crashes every month. (What about 2 plus million people in jail, the drug war, and so on?)

I see a lot of "well you should not say you have nothing to hide". This is true. Extortionists are bad people. The FBI used extortion for many years through surveillance.

Patreus probably considered his affair no big deal. I think it was no big deal. Sabu and the Chinese hackers though were different animals. They were crazy and wild and socialized a lot. I am surprised the FBI has not caught more of that sort.

Probably, they have.

Sabu and the Chinese hackers captures, assuming all is on the up and up there I think are positives for people.

But there is an overall picture of a surveillance society which is true. So, there is a need for data retention laws and a continual watch and fight against the powers of policing agencies to surveil in non-important cases.

Currently, the governments of the world seem caught up on "catching the bad guy" and throwing a very wide net to do so.

That will not end well for those nations. It is a bad expenditure and a bad investment. There are real problems the world faces.

Governments have a tendency to overfocus on how much power they can have, and I think that when they get a sure power outlet like with surveillance powers they end up trapping themselves.

Those sorts of systems do fall and will fall by their own efforts. Hitler went too far, Pol Pot went too far, Hoover went too far, and so on.

There is a strong weakness of surveillance: the audience is guilty and without a voice. They are the listeners to the players. Like a television audience to a television show. It is the actors who have the real power. If they learn how to use it.

Consider the double X program and similar ones for proof of that concept.

@Grey, while there are lots of technical means to increase privacy, almost all are beyond the grasp of the masses. There will always be a select few that know how to be incognito, but simply pointing at techie tools misses @Bruce's point

Perhaps, but I disagree with Bruce's point that the law is the solution to these privacy problems. The benefits are too large, the technology is too powerful, and the temptation is too strong to have any reasonable expectation that private industry or Congress will ever recognize digital privacy.

It's up to you. If existing tools are too techie for the masses, then the masses can pay for privacy-as-a-service if it's is important enough to them.

I'd also say (assuming that I understand his argument correctly) that Bruce's reliance on the law to protect privacy implicit in this essay is not consistent with his recent essay When Technology Overtakes Security, in which he argues that the law is oftentimes powerless in the face of asymmetrically empowering technologies. Digital security is in many instances equivalent to digital privacy, and attackers in either domain need not be be hindered by law.

Coyne Tibbets - Allot of what you describe is already law in Europe under the Data Protection Directive and local legislation like the UK's Data Protection Act. It does not mandate recording but does guarantee data subject's rights to review, access and correction on data stored on them. We also have some legislation working its way through (EU Data Retention Directive is an example) trying to force ISPs to store the data you are talking about. We are fairly close to your somewhat dystopian future. I do agree that it is better than the current abuses we see of the asymmetry you described. It is a far from ideal solution though.

Instead of evading the tracking, how about overloading the trackers instead? I wish there was something similar to a screensaver that could run in the background when my PC is idle and do random searches and browsing.

@AC
Do you think that our web histories internal to the United States are being tracked as well?

(I assume you mean, "by government.") The assumption I have been using is, that if it is feasible to record it, it is being recorded. That's a pretty broad assumption.

Take phone calls: It's hard to find a statistic, but let's assume 750 billion minutes annually (based on 2x or so of the 315 billion minutes figure for 2010 hard lines). Assume a secret form of live voice compression at 2000 bits/second (phoneme encoding could be done ca. 1980 at 150 bits/second so that seems reasonable). 750 G x 60 sec x 2000 = 10,050 terabytes per year. Retail storage is available for around $1/GB, yielding a bottom line of $25 million/year or so, including a complete double set for backup. Could the NSA afford that (and keep it forever)?

Well, "Duh!"

William Binny talked about how the NSA had the problem of analyzing 20 TB/minute--10 million TB/year-- of data. Just what do you think that data contains?

So, assume they are recording all calls: Given NSA proclivities, assuming anything else doesn't make sense.

...which brings us back to your question about web history. Much less to record than voice...do you still doubt the answer is, "Yes"?

@Finlay Macrae
It [...] does guarantee data subject's rights to review, access and correction on data stored on them.

And that's great, assuming those recording acknowledge the recording exists. Here in the states, it is SOP to deny the recording even exists, if you're not willing to allow "review, access and correction."

They'll look you right in the eye--look a judge right in the eye--and say, "Nope, we don't record that."

This is almost always revealed in the asymmetries: The company that always has the recording when it benefits the company and never when it benefits the customer; the police who never loose the interrogation room tape when it contains evidence against the suspect, but somehow always lose it when accused of using a rubber hose on the subject; the company that denies recording that you bought X, even as you get buried in advertisements saying, "Because you bought X, you might be interested in Y"; and etc.

Possibly the environments are different between US and EU. But here, we need the mandate to eliminate denial and the asymmetries that result.

Schneier.com is a personal website. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of BT.

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Source: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/03/our_internet_su.html

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