Category: Uncategorized

Facebook to Buy Startup for Controlling Computers With Your Mind

(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. agreed to acquire CTRL-Labs, a technology startup that is building software to let people control a digital avatar using only their thoughts. The world’s largest social network is paying between $500 million and $1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal.

The closely held four-year-old startup, which has dozens of employees and has raised tens of millions in venture capital, uses a bracelet to measure neuron activity in a subject’s arm to determine movement that person is thinking about, even if they aren’t physically moving. That neuron activity is then translated into movement on a digital screen. Facebook declined to comment on the price of the acquisition.

CONTINUE READING at LAMESTREAM MEDIA — Facebook to Buy Startup for Controlling Computers With Your Mind

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CIA Developing Long-Range Face-Scanning Capability – Nextgov

The intelligence community is working to build biometric identification systems that can single out individuals from hundreds of yards away or more…

Ultimately, the tech would let spy agencies rapidly identify people using cameras deployed on far off rooftops and unmanned aircraft, according to the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the research arm for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

CONTINUE READING at NextGov.com  — The Intelligence Community is Exploring Long-Range Biometric Identification  – Nextgov

DOJ files civil suit against Edward Snowden over new memoir | Fox News

Snowden writes in the book that his seven years working for the NSA and CIA led him to conclude the U.S. intelligence community “hacked the Constitution” and put everyone’s liberty at risk and that he had no choice but to turn to journalists to reveal it to the world.

“I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bush’s, would ever hold the IC [intelligence community] legally responsible — for anything,” he writes.

 

CONTINUE READING at LAMESTREAM MEDIA — DOJ files civil suit against Edward Snowden over new memoir | Fox News

NY finds $1B in hidden transfers by family behind OxyContin – HideOutNow

The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma used Swiss and other hidden accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves, New York’s attorney general contends in court papers filed Friday.
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The transfers bolster allegations by New York and other states that the Sacklers worked to shield their wealth in recent years because of mounting worries about legal threats.
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The filing, made in a New York court, follows decisions by that state and others to reject a tentative settlement with Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue, announced this week, arguing it does not do enough to make amends for the company’s and family’s alleged roles in flooding U.S. communities with prescription painkillers.

CONTINUE READING at HideOutNow.com — NY finds $1B in hidden transfers by family behind OxyContin – Hide Out Now

‘They wanted me gone’: Edward Snowden tells of whistleblowing, his AI fears and six years in Russia | US news | The Guardian

Snowden also said: “The greatest danger still lies ahead, with the refinement of artificial intelligence capabilities, such as facial and pattern recognition.

“An AI-equipped surveillance camera would be not a mere recording device, but could be made into something closer to an automated police officer.”

He is concerned the US and other governments, aided by the big internet companies, are moving towards creating a permanent record of everyone on earth, recording the whole of their daily lives.

CONTINUE READING at TheGuardian.com — ‘They wanted me gone’: Edward Snowden tells of whistleblowing, his AI fears and six years in Russia | US news | The Guardian

Exclusive: Feds Order Apple And Google To Hand Over Names Of 10,000+ Users Of A Gun Scope App

Own a rifle? Got a scope to go with it? The government might soon know who you are, where you live and how to reach you.

That’s because Apple and Google have been ordered by the U.S. government to hand over names, phone numbers and other identifying data of at least 10,000 users of a single gun scope app, Forbes has discovered. It’s an unprecedented move: never before has a case been disclosed in which American investigators demanded personal data of users of a single app from Apple and Google. And never has an order been made public where the feds have asked the Silicon Valley giants for info on so many thousands of people in one go.

 

CONTINUE READING at LAMESTREAM MEDIA –  Exclusive: Feds Order Apple And Google To Hand Over Names Of 10,000+ Users Of A Gun Scope App