The new U.S. intelligence czar is developing a computer system capable of data-mining huge amounts of information about everyday events to discern patterns that look like terrorist planning. The technology is reminiscent of the axed Total Information Awareness program. Civil liberties and privacy advocates criticized the effort, called Tangram, which is being developed by contractors working for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Read more about it here.
Now, this isnt exactly “news” on the basis that its not “new” information, however I have been reading about an Airborne Holographic Projector. The holographic projector displays a three-dimensional visual image in a desired location, removed from the display
generator. The projector can be used for psychological operations and strategic perception management. It is also useful for optical deception and cloaking, providing a momentary distraction when engaging an unsophisticated adversary.
There is a pretty good video of the Total Immersion – D’Fusion (DEMO 2004), something thats not a million miles away from the above.
The reason why i am woffling on about this is that i read an “imaginative scenario” that was proposed by the US Air Force (USAF) in 1991 during the Gulf War wherby a huge shimmering face materialises in the sky causing soldiers and citizens to prostrate themselves as each hears the voice of Allah, commanding them to overthrow the evil and treacherous Saddam Hussein.
Cutting to the chase, if you see a face in the sky telling you to do something, think before you do 
DNS Conference 9 is now on! The annual hacker event will take place in Manchester and run alongside the Continuity Conference setup by the good people at Manchester 2600. The events will run from the 1st December (Friday) through to the 3rd December (Sunday). More details will be announced soon.
From : www.continuity.org.uk
Courtesy of Manchester 2600
Continuity is a free security convention open to anyone with an interest in computer security, hacking, phone phreaking, telephony, cryptography, warez, internet security/privacy, urban exploration, social engineering and related subjects.
One of our key aims with Continuity is to gather together as many people as possible who were on the old school BBS’s like DaC, Terminal Boredom, Unauthorised Access, Urban XTC, 1066, and the many others, or attended hacker conferences like Access All Areas, Controversy, Conspiracy, Catastrophe and DNSCon, along with people who have attended any of the monthly
UK 2600 meetings.
We would also like to see anybody there with a current interest in computer security and related subjects even if they have never been on a BBS or to a conference before.
COST : Continuity is a completely FREE event
The much anticipated version 2.0 of Mozilla’s popular web browser will be available for download tomorrow.
Firefox 2.0 sports an inline spell-checker, anti-phishing technology and improved tabbed browsing – a feature Microsoft have been eager to adopt. Firefox’s share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004 and statistics indicate an ever increasing move to Firefox by Windows users. 2600uk.com itself showing 83.8% Windows users with 64% of total users preferring Firefox.
Firefox 2.0 will be available as a 5meg download from www.getfirefox.com
A comprehensive review of the new features found in Firefox 2.0 can be found here
Ever the bearer of proprietry software, Microsoft have inadvertantly managed to steal an hour of everyones time.
A bug in Microsofts Exchange Server is set to turn the clocks back a week earlier than anticipated meaning loyal users of Outlook, and the such, will find need to log a call with the much beloved Mulder and Scully as an hour of their day is molested by the Seattle enitities.
The issue occurs as Microsofts Exchange Server handles the yearly change from BST to GMT. However, under the impression that every October is to only have 4 sundays, the program will reset the clocks a week early, as this year, along with 2010, 2011 and 2016, October has 5 sundays.
Microsoft have issued a patch for pre-service pack 2 releases here.
The Irish government has begun issuing RFID passports with biometric data that can be read at a distance to comply with US regulations for its visa waiver programme.
But unlike the RFID passports the USA is now issuing, the Irish ones lack a security feature preventing them from being skimmed, or read surreptitiously.
The US government has gone to the trouble of fitting its passports with a layer of foil that interferes with skimming attempts when the document is closed. The Irish government has not. A local lobbying outfit called Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) has complained that the new passports are ripe for remote privacy invasion. As of course they are.
Unfortunately, DRI has taken that a step further, fretting in a recent interview with the Sunday Times that the unprotected passports could leave Irish travelers “open to targeting by terrorists”.
Read More : The Register – Irish passports go RFID, and naked
As some of you may have noticed, 2600uk.com has dropped off the face of the Google planet. Asking around it would appear that a number of other websites have also fallen from googles grace and, interestingly enough, each of those interviewed contained information on the darkside of Googles CodeSearch facility.
I swift email to Google produced no reply and checking Google’s cache of 2600uk.com lists our CodeSearch post at the top spot. With its frequent intrusion in to our lives not enough, could it be that Google is also trying to censor those with whom it fails to agree?
I’ve always said, “He who controls Google, controls the world”. Yet with the Google hole becoming ever deeper, it wouldn’t be ludicrous to suggest that Google itself will fall from grace in the not too distant future.
Update: It looks like Google has now relisted the site. Interestingly this comes as the CodeSearch post drops off the homepage and into the archives. Again, there has been no response to previous emails querying Google.
This year saw the beginning of British Telecom’s implimentation of their Next Generation Network – The 21st Century Network, or 21CN. To compliment our series of 21CN articles, mo0 from the Hacker Voice Radio IRC network informs me of the following site offering a lookup service to find when your exchange goes 21CN.
A bit of background information…
Terrorstorm is a documentary made by Alex Jones & Infowars; which sheds light on issues such as the NWO, 911 and past government false flag operations. This documentary is pretty powerful and as such has had millions of viewings on Google video.
However, Google has reset Terrorstorm’s place in the “top 100″ list over 4 times now, they have admitted to this in a recent press statement but it is still unclear as to why they have done it or who is making them.
This is quite clearly an attempt to reduce ratings and avoid it becoming as big as “Loose Change” and other such documentaries.
Its becoming increasingly clear that the government is stamping all over pro-freedom material in an attempt to silence and squash the growth of “free-thinkers” and anti-NWO activists.
For those of you who are thinking “So what?! Who gives a shit about crackpot conspiracy theorists” you couldnt be MORE wrong, the government is attempting to make websites that host videos require a special broadcasting license. This one act would fundamentally devastate the freedom of the internet and pave the way for many more laws to destroy the internet as we currently know it.
The “reasoning” behind such legislation is said to be in order to set minimum standards on areas such as hate speech and the protection of children.
Its quite obvious that they throw in “protection of children” to make it sit better with clueless pram pushing fools and tree hugging techno-weenies, they also link “hate speech” to terrorism to make that sit better with the supposed “pro-freespeech” MP’s.
As many of you will know, the U.S. Air Force is preparing to create a new command to develop techniques for fighting in cyberspace, how long will it be before security websites that provide exploits and exploit tutorials get shut down because they could “provide terrorists with tools to harm the national infrastructure”?.
Do you want to get shoved in one of the many opening FIMA camps for being a terrorist just because you know something which the government class as “dangerous”????
We must wake up and get involved in the fight for our freedom before its too late!
Check out this article by the London Times for more information.
As the standard 419 scams become common knowledge, idiot fraudsters are looking for more ways in which to dupe the naive societies of the western world.
In their latest attempt, scammers operating from Amsterdamn and Rotterdamn have cloned well known courier websites, such as DHL and Lufthansa Cargo, in a bid to defraud the common citizen.
The new scam works like this; Potential fraudsters advertise used motor vehicles on popular sites, such as autotrader and car.com, for next to nothing. Would be buyers then discover that the item is housed abroad, often in Spain or another European country. At this point the fraudsters inform the buyer that transport costs need to be paid in advance, and recommend couriers such as “DHL Shippers” and “Lufthansa Worldwide Cargo”, and polished escrow services.
Of course the items dont exist. The advance fee is taken and nothing more is heard from the seller. The transport company websites use branding from the websites they mock in an effort to appear legit. The obvious advice to anyone looking at buying a used car or bike is that if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Refrain from buying items that require shipping from abroad and never pay upfront to unknown sellers.
(Please note that DHL Shippers and Lufthansa Worldwide Cargo are fictional companies used by scam scum.)