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OPERATION AURORAGOLD

In March 2011, two weeks before the Western intervention in Libya, a secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military’s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya’s cellphone networks and monitor text messages. For the NSA, the task was easy. The agency had already obtained technical information about the cellphone carriers’ internal systems by spying on documents sent among company employees, and these details would provide the perfect blueprint to help the military break into the networks. The NSA’s assistance in the Libya operation, however, was not an isolated case. It was part of a much larger surveillance program—global in its scope and ramifications—targeted not just at hostile countries.

Thursday December 4 By Computer System Intelligence Read more...

How to live for a month in virtual reality

Next year, artist Mark Farid wants to give up a month of his life to virtual reality. If a crowdfunding campaign succeeds, he’ll spend 28 days in a gallery, wearing a VR headset and a pair of noise-canceling headphones. For the duration of the show, all he’ll experience will be video and audio captured by a complete stranger, going about their daily life. When they eat, he’ll eat. When they sleep, he’ll sleep. As much as modern technology permits, he will let his individual identity evaporate. This isn’t escapism. He’s not trying to live as a famous actor, or a star athlete, or someone from a vastly different culture or time period. Spending minutes in virtual reality can be uncomfortable, let alone days. So why do it? “It’s to see if who we are is an individual identity, or if there is just a cultural identity that kind of takes us on,” says Farid. “I’ve grown up in the city my whole life. So everything that I’ve seen — the square gardens that we have, the tree that’s planted in that specific place, the way the wind travels down the road ... all of that is artificially created,” he says. “Every experience that we’re having is synthetic.”

Wednesday November 19 By Computer System Intelligence Read more...

The pitfalls and promise of Internet.org and Project Loon

My first career, before I got into technology, was in international development. I spent two years as a Peace Corps health and water sanitation volunteer in south Cameroon, followed by several more working as a project manager for a number of USAID-funded health workforce programs in South Sudan, Kenya and Vietnam. I still maintain a lot of ties to the development community, and remain personally aware of what the “digital divide” really means and looks like for the majority of the world today. It is thus with keen interest that I’ve kept tabs on tech industry “goodwill” initiatives for the developing world – in particular, Facebook-led Internet.org and Google’s Project Loon. These two projects have many noble aims in common: broadly, in Facebook’s words, bringing internet connectivity to “the two-thirds of the world’s population that doesn’t have it.” If you watch the high-gloss YouTube marketing videos for each respective project, it’s hard not to get a little starry-eyed at the gee-whiz technology they employ.

Wednesday November 12 By Computer System Intelligence Read more...

Google Signs 60-Year, $1 Billion NASA Lease

Google has signed a long-term lease for part of a historic Navy air base, where it plans to renovate three massive hangars and use them for projects involving aviation, space exploration and robotics. The giant Internet company will pay $1.16 billion in rent over 60 years for the property, which also includes a working air field, golf course and other buildings. The 1,000-acre site is part of the former Moffett Field Naval Air Station on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Wednesday November 12 By Computer System Intelligence Read more...