confidential
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Google asks to test a new type of wireless broadband
Google has asked the FCC for permission to run secret wireless broad tests using the 6Ghz spectrum in multiple cities across the US. That could point to future internet services using the recently released spectrum, possibly under its new Fiber WebPass banner.
Oculus founder sued for using confidential information
Palmer Luckey and his company, Oculus VR Inc, are being sued yet again. Total Recall Technologies, a company in Hawaii, is accusing Luckey of violating a confidentiality agreement that he signed as a former employee of the company. According to the lawsuit, he was hired about four years ago for the precise purpose of developing a head-mounted display. As such, they claim he was privy to information and feedback that he later used for the Kickstarter campaign to introduce his own version of a head-mounted display, Oculus Rift.
WikiLeaks' Spy Files shed light on the corporate side of government surveillance
WikiLeaks' latest batch of documents hit the web this week, providing the world with a scarily thorough breakdown of a thoroughly scary industry -- government surveillance. The organization's trove, known as the Spy Files, includes a total of 287 files on surveillance products from 160 companies, as well as secret brochures and presentations that these firms use to market their technologies to government agencies. As Ars Technica reports, many of these products are designed to get around standard privacy guards installed in consumer devices, while some even act like malware. DigiTask, for example, is a German company that produces and markets software capable of circumventing a device's SSL encryption and transmitting all instant messages, emails and recorded web activity to clients (i.e., law enforcement agencies). This "remote forensic software" also sports keystroke logging capabilities, and can capture screenshots, as well. Included among DigiTask's other products is the WifiCatcher -- a portable device capable of culling data from users linked up to a public WiFi network. US-based SS8, Italy's Hacking Team and France's Vupen produce similar Trojan-like malware capable of documenting a phone or computer's "every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in," according to the publication. Speaking at City University in London yesterday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his organization decided to unleash the Spy Files as "a mass attack on the mass surveillance industry," adding that the technologies described could easily transform participating governments into a "totalitarian surveillance state." The documents, released on the heels of the Wall Street Journal's corroborative "Surveillance Catalog" report, were published alongside a preface from WikiLeaks, justifying its imperative to excavate such an "unregulated" industry. "Intelligence agencies, military forces, and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and [sic] secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers," wrote Wikileaks in its report. "In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm." The organization says this initial document dump is only the first in a larger series of related files, scheduled for future release. You can comb through them for yourself, at the source link below.
Hack your monitor and 3D glasses, ensure ultimate privacy
You've always wanted a bit more privacy with your monitor (porn jokes notwithstanding) and if you're willing to tear apart a spare LCD monitor and a pair of 3D theater glasses (thanks, Dreamworks and Pixar!), you'll get it. In lieu of a thicker tinfoil hat, Instructables' dimovi suggests removing the LCD's frame, cutting out its polarized film with a utility knife before removing the screen's film adhesive with a combination of cleaner and paint thinner and reassembling the monitor. Once complete, grab the glasses, cut out the lenses and combine them with the plastic film removed from the monitor before inserting them back into their frames. The result is an LCD monitor that displays a white screen to anyone not wearing the customized glasses, your actions being confidential, no matter what they might happen to be. Check the how-to video embedded after the break, or hit the source link for full instructions
Tim Cook: my first-person impression of Apple's new CEO
After yesterday's news, I was originally going to title this post "Relax. Apple's new CEO Tim Cook is gonna do just fine." I was going to push back on the conventional wisdom that nobody can lead Apple as Steve Jobs has with facts about how Tim Cook has stepped in multiple times to help Apple navigate the roughest economy in at least a generation with stunning success. I was going to write about how Tim Cook is considered by many to be an operational genius and a fair but tough negotiator. I was going to write how he came from Compaq and IBM before that. I was going to write about all that. But you can read his history anywhere. Everyone is writing about him now. So instead I'm going to tell you about the first time I met Tim Cook and why, from that day forward, I have never once worried about Apple post-Steve Jobs. I was in my third year of a five year stint with Apple the first time I met Tim Cook. Steve Jobs had made waves earlier that year with his Stanford commencement speech, where he discussed his cancer diagnosis; Wall Street and the tech industry were still worried sick about who could possibly lead Apple when Jobs no longer could. I knew one thing for sure: it wasn't me. In the grand scheme of things at Apple, I was nobody important. I was just a sales guy that had flown out to Cupertino with other sales people one September for the annual sales conference. And though my numbers were great, I knew that I was replaceable -- just like most employees at large companies can be replaced. I could leave Apple tomorrow and the company would be just fine. I was no Steve Jobs. No matter what your position is in the company, however, from intern to executive staff, it's always great being on Apple's campus. You see cool things, meet interesting people, and have some great food (and a few good games of volleyball) to boot. But on this particular day we were herded into one of the meeting rooms you sometimes see when Apple holds smaller press events on the campus -- the auditoriums with the projector screen the size of one you'd see in a 1950s movie theater and a stage with a small podium with some metallic stools near the front. On this day there were about 300 sales guys and their managers in one such auditorium watching presentations from the iLife project managers about what the latest iteration of Apple's digital lifestyle suite was going to deliver. Though the presentations were interesting, you could see everyone in the room fidgeting a little as if they were restless. You see, we had been notified that Steve Jobs' #2 man, COO Tim Cook, might be dropping by for a visit. The day went on as we explored the new iLife suite; then, sometime halfway through the iDVD presentation, a woman who worked for Apple who I had never seen before entered the auditorium and simply announced, "Excuse me. Three minutes!" There was a shuffling on stage and the project managers halted their presentation as a murmur ran through the room. The woman who had spoken loaded something from a USB drive onto the Mac behind the podium. Three minutes later (to the second) Tim Cook entered the auditorium, flanked by his entourage. Cook walked down the steps and onto the stage. The room was completely silent. And it remained that way for maybe half a minute as Tim Cook slowly took a few steps back and forth. He shuffled the presentation remote around in his hand. He looked out at us and smiled, but still didn't speak. Then he clicked a button on the remote and a large image of a padlock appeared on the screen behind him. "The details of everything we talk about after this slide changes stay in this room," he said in that Southern drawl some of you may be familiar with if you've ever heard him speak on one of Apple's financial conference calls. At the time I had never heard his voice before, and it was such an odd contrast to what you expected to come out of a Silicon Valley executive's mouth. "It stays with Apple. With us," he said. It wasn't a threat. It wasn't an order. The "us" he spoke of, the tone he used, conveyed a sense of kinship. It showed the confidence and trust he had in every single Apple employee packed into that auditorium. We were Apple and Tim Cook appreciated us for that. Even though it's been five years since I worked at Apple and my NDA has long since expired, I'm not going to divulge the specific details he talked about, but I do want to relate the experience. During his time on stage, Cook spoke to us about numbers and metrics, about Apple and the state of the tech industry as a whole. He spoke in that long drawl at a controlled pace, but that drawl and pace had nuance to it that conveyed passion in slow tones. Then Steve Job's #2 guy did something many corporate higher-ups never do. He stopped speaking and asked to hear from us -- from the front-line sales people at Apple. He wanted to hear our questions and ideas. And that's when I found myself raising my hand and the next thing I know Tim Cook pointed at me and smiled. "Yes. You, please," he said. And as I was getting ready to speak I caught my boss out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting about five seats away from me in the auditorium and wore a nervous look on his face. And I knew that if he could have spoken to me in confidence then, my boss would have muttered, "Don't you ask him a foolish question! Don't you know who this is? He doesn't have time for silliness! He is a Very Important Person!" I ignored my boss's look as much as I could and asked Cook what he thought about the direction of a certain software company whose products were closely tied to the Mac; about their lack of support for certain applications Mac users were clamoring to have. Cook's answer was detailed and thorough, and everything he said about the company in question, every prediction and outlook, ended up coming true in the two years that followed. But the fact that he was dead right about the future of that company wasn't why I remember his answer to my question so well. It was because he took his own sweet time answering it. Tim Cook is one of those rare people who stop and think before speaking. Standing in the same room with him I realized that he's comfortable with silence as long as that silence is productive and appropriate. He's not like other tech execs who ramble almost immediately and incoherently at any question lobbed at them, as if doing so will convince others they know everything about everything. Tim Cook is a person who has confidence in his position as a leader, sans ego. Ego doesn't take pauses. It's rapid-fire. And it's that confidence and lack of ego that allows him the time to examine the issues and questions at hand, no matter how lowly or silly others may think them, and address them appropriately. But Cook's confidence, his answer to my question, and his knowledge about the industry isn't why I left the auditorium that day pitying the people on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley who were needlessly worried sick over who would lead Apple. I left the auditorium that day knowing the post-Steve Jobs Apple would be fine because of the way in which he addressed me -- the sales grunt. My boss's worried glances were for nothing. For Tim Cook there are no dumb questions. When he answered me he spoke to me as if I were the most important person at Apple. Indeed, he addressed me as if I were Steve Jobs himself. I know that's a big statement to make, but that's what it felt like and I've spoken with others who have told me the same thing. One just has to experience it to fully understand it, I suppose. His look, his tone, the long pause was evidence enough that he genuinely gave thought to the concern I brought up. And that's the day I began to feel like more than just a replaceable part. I was one of the tens of thousands of integral parts of Apple and it was Tim Cook's raw leadership ability, confidence, and subtle charisma that made me realize that. No one can ever replace Steve Jobs, the man, the genius. But Apple is not only Steve Jobs, no matter what anyone thinks. Apple is the interns and executive assistants; it's the retail employees and the designers; it's the marketing and PR departments, it's Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive; Bob Mansfield and Phil Schiller; it's the dozens of other names you see on all those Apple patents that we talk about every week. Apple is not any single one of these people. It is the sum of them all, run by a leader who possesses enough wisdom to know that everyone in the company matters, that everyone's concerns are valid and deserve attention. Tim Cook is such a leader. So relax everyone, will ya? I said it yesterday, but I'll repeat it again. Apple is one of the best-run companies on the planet and it's got years of growth ahead of it due to the incredible talent assembled by Jobs and Cook. People are not going to stop buying iPads and iPhones because Steve Jobs is now only the Chairman of Apple and not its CEO. And other companies are not going to suddenly make killer products that make Apple's look like last year's castoffs. Tim Cook has the reins firmly in hand; I only wish others who doubt me could spend two minutes in the same room with him. Apple's got the right CEO to carry it into the post-Steve Jobs era, and the company will continue to thrive.
Former Apple employee admits he sold confidential info, cost the company in excess of $2 million
Paul Devine, the man who last August collected a pretty lengthy list of charges against his name from the FBI and IRS -- which collectively amounted to an accusation of "screwing Apple" -- has now admitted his guilt. Specifically, Devine has fessed up to wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, in which he engaged while exchanging confidential information about upcoming Apple products for cold hard cash from interested parts suppliers. He's now having to forfeit $2.28 million in money and property that resulted from his nefarious exploits, with sentencing scheduled for June 6th. Devine's lawyer is quoted as saying he's a "good man who made a mistake, and now he's trying to make amends." Indeed, the mistake of getting caught and the amends of trying not to go to prison. Jump past the break for a full statement on the matter from the US Department of Justice.
Perfect Citizen: secret NSA surveillance program revealed by WSJ
Do you trust your government? Do you just support it like an obedient Britney Spears, steadfast to your faith that it will do the right thing? Your answer to those questions will almost certainly predict your response to a Wall Street Journal exposé of a classified US government program provocatively dubbed, "Perfect Citizen." Why not just call it "Big Brother," for crissake! Oh wait, according to an internal Raytheon email seen by the WSJ, "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother," adding, "The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government...feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security." Histrionics aside, according to the WSJ, the "expansive" program is meant to detect assaults on private companies and government agencies deemed critical to the national infrastructure. In other words, utilities like the electricity grid, air-traffic control networks, subway systems, nuclear power plants, and presumably MTV. A set of sensors deployed in computer networks will alert the NSA of a possible cyber attack, with Raytheon winning a classified, $100 million early stage contract for the surveillance effort. Now, before you start getting overly political, keep in mind that the program is being expanded under Obama with funding from the Bush-era Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. The WSJ also notes that companies won't be forced to install the sensors. Instead, companies might choose to opt-in because they find the additional monitoring helpful in the event of cyber attack -- think of Google's recent run-in with Chinese hackers as a potent example. Like most citizens, we have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, we cherish our civil liberties and prefer to keep the government out of our personal affairs. On the other, we can barely function when Twitter goes down, let alone the national power grid.
Sprint fires employee who leaked weak EVO 4G sales numbers
You know the backstory by now: Sprint boasted that the EVO 4G was its fastest selling phone ever a couple of days after hitting the American market, before abruptly correcting itself and admitting that the EVO's sales were in fact in line with those achieved by the Pre last summer. What you, and we, didn't know till now, however, is that Sprint's self-correction was sparked off by an employee with a curious mind and posting privileges over on the xda-developers forum. On June 6, according to MobileCrunch, this unnamed hero of truthiness browsed Sprint's internal inventory system and nailed down a figure of 65,500 sold units from Sprint's own stores -- a stat far south from what Sprint would announce a day later. That number ultimately found its way onto the message board, and though it obviously shouldn't be taken as authoritative (or exhaustive), it was enough to get Sprint to hit the auto-correct button and part ways with the activist member of staff. Harsh. [Thanks, Carol]
US military laptops, other gear filtering out to black market
Given that the memories of that classified DAP fiasco are still fresh on our brains, this one's a bit less shocking than it might otherwise be. Sure, we've heard of scatterbrained MI6 agents selling confidential digital cameras on eBay, but it's another thing entirely to see multiple US Army laptops making their way out to unsanctioned trading posts in Pakistan. A new report over at Military and GlobalPost explains that some high-tech gadgets are being confiscated on supply routes and from within vehicles, and from there, the wares are making their way to black market shops for anyone to buy. Anything from ruggedized computers to stabilized binoculars to night vision mounts have been spotted, and there's plenty of pictures to prove it. We must say, we're a bit worried about detailed war schematics slipping so easily into the hands of the enemy, but who knows, maybe they're just looking for a little Minesweeper action to take their minds away from it all.[Thanks, Jamie]Read - Gear on black marketRead - Pictures to prove it
Your office photocopier could help steal your identity
While we've seen just how to have a Sharp miracle in your office, it now seems that Sharp copiers (along with Xerox and a smorgasbord of others) could become a miraculous find for identify thieves. Given that many all-in-one "bizhubs" of today feature some sort of internal storage device to capture copies, scans, and faxes in case you need to resend the file a week or two later, it's not too surprising to think how such a convenience could be exploited by ill-willed individuals to extract personal information about you and your office mates. Pointing at tax time in particular, it has been suggested that many Americans photocopy sensitive documents that contain all the information needed to jack your ID without even realizing how vulnerable they've made themselves. Both Sharp and Xerox, however, have both released security kits that encrypt the internal data stored on its machines, but if you're using some off-the-wall copier and have noticed something peculiar about that fellow across the hall, stay sharp.
Apple asks FCC for iPhone confidentiality until June 15th
Who's going to crack first? Sure, the FCC is going to be sitting on the External Photos, Internal Setup, Test Setup Photos and a User Manual, all of which Apple has specifically asked it to keep confidential (not to mention all that proprietary stuff Apple doesn't want the FCC to reveal ever), making a teensy slip-up here or there all the more tantalizing, but Apple's going to be sitting on millions of dollars worth of sales, not to mention quite a few Chinese rip-off experts and LG's own Prada look-alike, so that June 15th date could prove plenty tempting for the both of them to shatter. Supposedly Cingular sent out an email today confirming June as the month, but we don't have a copy on hand, and sometimes we wonder how much more info Cingular has than we do. Still, a pre-June launch sounds pretty unlikely, and with that June 15th date floating around, a 15th or 16th launch seems like a reasonable conjecture.[Thanks, Steve C and Phil]
Insider and official shots of ORSiO's n725 Pocket PC phone
Not too long ago we were intrigued by some mysterious and confidential shots of a Pocket PC phone from a Russian company called ORSiO. Well, now the site that originally brought the phone to our attention has received some more detailed macro shots of the handset, presumably from the same pesky insider -- at least from the company's point of view. The device has been named as the n725 and packs 802.11b Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0, along with a slightly less exciting FM Radio tuner and IR port, which is more or less in line with the other relatively uninspiring specs that we already knew about: quad-band GSM and EDGE, 2.7-inch QVGA display, 2-megapixel cam, 192MB internal flash, and a 524MHz XScale running on Windows Mobile 5.0. Unfortunately we have no idea about the phone's availability or the price, so for now you'll have to settle for the cheap, temporary satisfaction that staring at the new shots will give you.
