Tech

Information sharing and better prosecution of hackers

President Obama unveiled a new proposal Tuesday aimed at protecting businesses and the government from hackers. The President’s plan would encourage public and private sector information sharing as well as expand law enforcement’s authority to prosecute digital criminals.

The proposal, announced at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in Arlington, Virginia, comes in the wake of high-profile hacks against Sony, Home Depot, J.P. Morgan and other companies over the past year. A wide array of businesses and police groups have been calling on Congress to pass new cybersecurity legislation as a response to those incidents.

On the corporate side, Obama’s plan would require businesses to notify consumers if their personal information has been exposed to hackers, as in the case of the Target and J.P. Morgan hacks, for instance. Additionally, companies would be protected from liability for sharing digital threats with the Department of Homeland Security, which would then share those threats in databases accessed by the private sector.

For prosecutors, the White House’s package would let them better target the sale of identity theft software and computer networks used by hackers. It would also criminalize the overseas sale of U.S. financial information.

Both government representatives and private companies have long demanded many of the steps highlighted in Obama’s proposal. Just last week, Admiral Michael S. Rogers, director of the NSA and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said Congress should pass legislation that improves coordination between U.S. intelligence and the private sector.

“We have got to create partnerships that bridge the divide between the private sector and the government,” Rogers said at a conference in New York City. “I don’t think it’s realistic for the private sector to deal with [cyber threats] all by themselves.”

A coalition of businesses, meanwhile, has already voiced support for the new plan.

“Collaboration between industry and government to share threat information is crucial in the fight against sophisticated and persistent cyber criminals,” said Nicholas Ahrens, vice president for cybersecurity and data privacy at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. A number of RILA members, including Walgreen, Target, Nike and JCPenney, began sharing data on cyber threats last May.

It’s unclear, however, if an Obama-backed cybersecurity bill will make it through the Republican-controlled Congress, which has in recent years failed to pass similar measures.

The news network will use drones to get aerial footage

CNN and the Federal Aviation Administration signed a research agreement Monday paving the way for the network to experiment with capturing news footage in the field.

“Our aim is to get beyond hobby-grade equipment and to establish what options are available and workable to produce high quality video journalism using various types of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] and camera setups,” CNN Senior Vice President David Vigilante said in a public statement.

CNN previously partnered with Georgia Tech Research Institute to develop drones for aerial footage. The new FAA agreement will ensure data from CNN’s experiments will be shared with regulators.

The announcement comes as a growing number of industries have urged the FAA to relax its restrictions on commercial drone flights. The agency last week granted new commercial drone permits to two companies: one in agriculture, the other in real estate.

“We hope this agreement with CNN and the work we are doing with other news organizations and associations will help safely integrate unmanned newsgathering technology and operating procedures into the National Airspace System,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta.

The tech giant has filed a patent for what it calls “3D user interface”

Apple has patented a motion-control technology that would let people control a computer with hand gestures. The tech giant’s new patent includes diagrams of a person sitting in front of a desktop computer and gesturing to a webcam to control actions on the computer’s screen.

In the patent filing, Apple describes being able to use human gestures to control a “3D user interface” and to unlock a device, similar to the numerical passwords people currently use to unlock phones. An analyst at Global Equities Research speculated to CNBC that the tech could be used in a new gaming console or on the Apple TV streaming device.

Apple isn’t the first big tech company to experiment with gesture controls. Microsoft has been pushing its Kinect device, which tracks movements and responds to human voices, on its Xbox video game consoles for several years. However, the tech has yet to see widespread adoption, and Microsoft went so far as to remove Kinect from the Xbox One due to its high price and privacy concerns.

Among the other patents Apple was granted Tuesday was one for a GoPro-like wearable camera that could be used on bike helmets or underwater on scuba masks. The patent describes a camera that would boast a special microphone to record underwater sounds and could be controlled remotely using other devices such as a smartwatch. Following news of the patent, GoPro’s shares fell more than 12% Tuesday.

There are over 1,600 Bitcoin sellers in New York alone and thousands more across the country

This story was originally published at the The Kernel, the Daily Dot’s Sunday magazine.

As I stood on a Brooklyn street corner late at night with one hand gripping a wad of cash in my jacket and the other clutching the smartphone in my pocket, an old memory hit me. The place looked exactly like a street corner where I bought weed once (or maybe twice) in high school.

This time I was making another transaction, one that could also confuse bystanders and get a second look from local police. I was getting ready to buy bitcoins.

There are plenty of other ways to acquire the virtual currency. There are even Bitcoin ATMs in several cities in North America. But sites like LocalBitcoins.com—a Craigslist-inspired directory that brokers real-life transactions for a modest fee—serve a very specific type of clientele, those trying to cash-out their bitcoins or acquire them without tying the transaction to their actual identity, often with the intention of staying on the blindside of the law.

I remember feeling vulnerable back in high school, worrying about being robbed or arrested. A similar weight started to settle in as I waited for the stranger I found online. I knew nothing about him, not even his name or what to look for. He just instructed me to come to this intersection with my smartphone, ready to complete the transaction.

The $160 that I carried wouldn’t even buy me a single Bitcoin, but it’s always best to test the waters with small stakes. The dealer was willing to exchange as much as $5,000 per transaction, and others offer services that double that.

I leaned into a shadow on the gate of a shuttered bodega and checked the time. My seller was late.

Read the rest of the story at The Kernel.

Take advantage of the Android's ability to fine tune battery usage

Cell phone batteries have come a long way since the first smartphones, but we’re demanding more of the devices that double as our navigators, cameras and media centers. Along with the usual battery-drainers — Wi-Fi, GPS and video streaming — Android phones come with some unique energy gluttons, such as live-updating home screen widgets.

However, Android phones let you fine tune how your battery is used to a level not possible with iPhones. Here the key ways you can extend your Android phone’s battery life without having to change the way you use the phone (too much).

Save power with these settings

Check which apps are draining your battery

In all versions of Android, hit Settings > Device > Battery or Settings > Power > Battery Use to see a list of all apps and how much battery power they’re using. If an app you don’t use often seems to take up a disproportionate amount of power, consider uninstalling it.

Uninstall apps

Delete apps you don’t use from a single menu by heading to Settings > Apps > All. Tap on each app and hit Uninstall to remove it as well as any data it has created.

Remove unnecessary widgets from the home screen

Many Android apps, including social networks, weather apps and news apps, come with widgets that sit handily on the home screen for real-time updates. However, widgets are battery drainers due to their constant syncing with the mother ship or power-sucking animations. If you don’t need a permanent window into the Facebook news feed or regular updates on the weather, remove the superfluous widget by pressing and holding it, then dragging it to the trash can icon.

Turn off notifications

Getting real-time updates of what’s going on in your apps is handy for things like email or social networks, but many apps automatically demand permission to send notifications as well for reasons that are much less useful. Turn off notifications by heading to Settings > Apps, then visiting less necessary apps and unchecking “Show notifications.”

Minimize app syncing

Another alternative is to keep app notifications on but decrease how frequently the app syncs and checks for changes such as new messages, extra game coins or updated weather stats. Head to Settings > Accounts & Sync to do this manually for each app, or toggle off auto-sync in the same menu.

Shut down location tracking

Most apps track your location and therefore use more battery power than strictly necessary by accessing your GPS. Head to Settings > Location to see which apps are tracking you, then tap each to turn it off. (The downside to turning this off is seeing less accurately targeted ads.) HTC also recommends shutting down maps apps after you’re done.

Kill unused connections

Keeping Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and cellular data turned on means your phone is constantly scanning for these connections whether or not it’s connected. Turn off the connections until you need them by swiping down from the top of your phone, tapping your device’s equivalent of Quick Settings, then toggling the relevant icons.

Turn on Airplane Mode in low-signal areas

Smartphones use more power when trying to connect in low-signal areas. If you can’t get a signal, turn on Airplane Mode by swiping down. Then restart your cellular connection when you’re in an area with better coverage.

Cut down on phone calls in a moving car

According to Google Support, phone calls made in a moving car take up more power because the phone needs to transfer its signal between cellular towers.

Use the Power Control widget

Keep an eye on and tweak display brightness, Wi-Fi, GPS and cellular connections and auto-sync from the Power Control widget. This widget comes preloaded on most Android devices, but if you don’t see yours in your Widgets section, head to the Play Store to download it. (need the link)

Keep weather updates local

Who doesn’t love the weather widget that tells the time and the temperature in one handy, live-updating home screen box? If you’ve loaded yours up with cities where you’ve been vacationing, that widget could be contributing to heavy battery drain. Remove superfluous cities from your weather app by heading to Settings.

Use a dark background

For Android phones with AMOLED screens —high-end smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and Moto X —hyper-bright displays use a lot of power. Snatch back some of that battery juice by choosing a dark background so that fewer pixels need to be lit up. Head to Settings > Display > Wallpaper — and make sure you don’t select a live wallpaper (one that has motion), which require extra power.

Decrease screen brightness

If you’re running low on battery power, dimming the screen makes a good temporary fix until you can get to a charger, no matter what sort of display technology your phone uses. Pull down the notifications menu, find the brightness slider and drag it to the very dimmest display level you’re comfortable with.

Decrease screen timeout

You can save a little bit of battery power many times over by decreasing the length of time your phone remains idle before its display automatically goes dark. Head to Settings > Display to adjust Screen timeout to, say, 10 seconds rather than an interval like 30 minutes (which you may have chosen if you were doing something like using the phone for a recipe).

Stop vibrating

If your phone is ringing, you don’t need it to vibrate as well. Head to Settings > Sound and uncheck “Vibrate while ringing.” To really get into battery miser mode, turn off haptic feedback, the handy little vibe when you press virtual keys, by going to Settings > Language and unchecking “Vibrate on keypress.”

Turn on Power Saving Mode

Top-end Android phones, including the HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5 and Moto X, have a Power Saving Mode that restricts some features in order to extend battery life. Head to Settings > Saver (or Power Saver), where you can also fine tune specifics such as whether or not to conserve CPU power, screen brightness or vibration feedback and choose whether or not to turn off data connection when the phone is asleep.

Newer phones such as the HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3 also have an ultra and extreme power-saving modes in which data connections turn off when the screen is off, notifications, GPS, Auto Sync and Bluetooth are off, and only essential apps such as text messaging, email and the clock are allowed to run.

When Android Lollipop 5.0 becomes available, its battery saver feature will extend the battery life of your device up to 90 minutes, says a Google rep. New power controls will also include an estimate of the time remaining before you need to charge.

More helpful battery life tips

Keep your phone cool

According to the Battery University blog by Cadex Electronics, phone batteries degrade much faster when they’re hot, whether you’re using the phone or it’s idle. Avoid leaving your phone on the dashboard of your car on a sunny day.

Charge your phone before it drops too far below half power

The best way to maintain smartphone batteries is to keep your phone battery more than 40% charged. Constantly allowing the battery to go from completely full to completely empty can damage it and decrease its capacity over time. On the flip side, leaving your phone plugged in when it’s completely full can also degrade the battery. Best practice? Keep your battery between 40% and 80% charged.

Always get updates

Whether updates are intended for downloaded apps or the Android OS itself, they generally include bug fixes and tweaks that improve performance, including how efficiently battery is used.

This article was written by Natasha Stokes and originally appeared on Techlicious

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An avalanche of almost-classified info sows confusion

The Pentagon held its breath Monday when Islamic State sympathizers hacked into U.S. Central Command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts and began posting internal U.S. military documents on the Twitter feed.

Could this be another Snowden job? Was any of the material classified? After all, they were posting the names, addresses and phone numbers of senior U.S. military officers.

Within an hour, the Pentagon’s sigh was audible. While there was a lot of official-looking, internal documents posted before both social-media accounts were shut down, none of it appears to have been classified.

Many sported the officious-sounding but non-classified For Official Use Only label.

Monday’s bullet-dodging highlights the U.S. government’s preoccupation with secrecy, and its downside: when nearly everything is classified, it can be harder to protect real secrets.

Think of the government’s penchant for secrecy like an iceberg: what’s showing above the water line is that tiny share that’s classified Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.

But underwater—where, strangely, you can’t see—are more than 100 different designations that boil down to “Don’t let the public see this.”

For example, the non-profit Project on Government Oversight grumbled last year about the Pentagon inspector general’s routine requirement that any member of the public wishing to see some of its more interesting reports file a formal Freedom of Information Act request. “As anyone familiar with the FOIA process knows, turnaround on a request can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few years,” POGO’s Neil Gordon noted. “So, it’s reasonable to assume that the DoD IG is indeed trying to bury the report to spare the Pentagon and … its … contractors the embarrassing publicity.”

The varying labels—and each agency’s rules for releasing non-classified information—is confusing, as the Obama Administration itself conceded in 2010:

At present, executive departments and agencies (agencies) employ ad hoc, agency-specific policies, procedures, and markings to safeguard and control this information, such as information that involves privacy, security, proprietary business interests, and law enforcement investigations. This inefficient, confusing patchwork has resulted in inconsistent marking and safeguarding of documents, led to unclear or unnecessarily restrictive dissemination policies, and created impediments to authorized information sharing. The fact that these agency-specific policies are often hidden from public view has only aggravated these issues.

That’s why it wants to toss all those agency-specific labels into the trash and designate them all as Controlled Unclassified Information. Perhaps the reduced profusion of almost-classified labels will help reduce confusion like Monday’s (the Pentagon, of course, has its own process underway for all its non-classified technical data). And having the word Unclassified in the designation should make it clear to even cable-news anchors what’s up.

The Administration plans to issue a proposed regulation to funnel all the labels into that single Controlled Unclassified Information designation this spring. It’s slated to be fully operational in 2018.

Obviously, in addition to craving secrecy, the government abhors alacrity.

Read next: Twitter Hacking Gives Pentagon a Black Eye

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Apps like Snapchat and Whatsapp can be used by terrorists, says Prime Minister David Cameron

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday he wants to ban encrypted messaging services like Snapchat and WhatsApp if British intelligence services can not access them.

If Cameron is re-elected in May’s parliamentary elections, his government would target any encrypted online communication tools that could potentially be used by terrorists, the prime minister said.

“Are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read?” Mr. Cameron said at an event on Monday, the New York Times reports. ““My answer to that question is: ‘No, we must not.’ ”

Cameron’s statement comes as European politicians demand greater access to people’s online activities on Google and Facebook, particularly after terrorist threats like the attack last week in Paris. Tech giants including Microsoft, Twitter and Google have resisted greater oversight by intelligence agencies in Europe and the United States.

It’s unclear how the British government would enforce a ban on apps like Snapchat and the Facebook-owned WhatsApp, which are used by millions of people worldwide.

[NYT]

Try Powder, a super-relaxing endless ski game

Looking for some fun new games to play on your iPhone? Here are five favorites TIME rounded up this week. Enjoy!

The Princess Bride

Although arguably less remarkable than the film that inspired it, The Princess Bride iOS game can only be described as “long expected.” A charming series of well-animated backgrounds combined with stills from the film set the scene for four small mini games. Among others, players can climb a cliff with a castigating Wally Shawn, or duel Inigo Montoya. Although nothing can surpass the magic of The Princess Bride, the game is a pleasant way to relive some of it.

The Princess Bride is available for $3.99 in the App Store.

Space Marshals

An amazingly animated iOS game, Space Marshals is the outer space equivalent of Cowboys and Aliens. Don a space-age 10-gallon hat and hunt down criminals. The game involves a surprising amount of strategy, with options to flank criminals, or lurk in the shadows until the moment is right to strike. Weapons and kits are just as sophisticated—choose the right body armor and blast enemies away with specialized grenades or assault rifles, shotguns, or pistols.

Space Marshals is available for $4.99 in the App Store.

1-bit Ninja Remix Rush

The most amazing aspect of 1-bit Ninja is its ability to fuse the most two-dimensional, basic, flattest gaming technology with the elegance of 3D iOS gaming. Hop around in a streamlined, retro landscape in order to fight the clock and destroy as many enemies as possible as an agile ninja character.

1-bit Ninja Remix Rush is available for $1.99 in the App Store.

Zoidtrip

Squirm around as a squid-like triangle with tentacles and navigate a basic but increasingly complicated landscape in order to avoid obstacles and platforms. Survive as long as you can and crush your high score. The higher you go, the more you can unlock, which means accessing new triangles of different colors and an array of adorable faces to match. Zoidtrip is a good way to pass a moment or two of spare time.

Zoidtrip is free in the App Store.

Powder

One of the most calming iOS games ever developed, Powder is a ski simulator that allows users to slowly go down an endless slope, slaloming around trees and obstacles—but never too challenging in pace or landscape. A great game to download if you’re prone to stress or angry outbursts in the middle of your work day. A digital stress ball.

Powder is free in the App Store.

TIME explained the Deep Web in a 2013 cover story

Ross Ulbricht’s trial for his alleged role as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” the owner of the shadowy online market place Silk Road, is scheduled to begin Tuesday. Ulbricht was indicted last year for operating the site, which allowed users to buy and sell drugs anonymously. He was charged with narcotics conspiracy, engaging in criminal enterprise, conspiracy to commit computer hacking and money laundering conspiracy. As part of the indictment, Ulbricht is accused of running the website on “The Onion Router,” concealing IP addresses and hiding the locations of Bitcoin transmissions.

If all that sounds complicated, that’s because it is.

Shortly after Ulbricht’s arrest, TIME’s Lev Grossman and Jay Newton-Small profiled Silk Road and the world in which it operated. As they explained, there’s a reason the details are difficult to nail down. After all, that’s the whole point:

On the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2013, a tall, slender, shaggy-haired man left his house on 15th Avenue in San Francisco. He paid $1,000 a month cash to share it with two housemates who knew him only as a quiet currency trader named Josh Terrey. His real name was Ross Ulbricht. He was 29 and had no police record. Dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, Ulbricht headed to the Glen Park branch of the public library, where he made his way to the science-fiction section and logged on to his laptop–he was using the free wi-fi. Several FBI agents dressed in plainclothes converged on him, pushed him up against a window, then escorted him from the building.

The FBI believes Ulbricht is a criminal known online as the Dread Pirate Roberts, a reference to the book and movie The Princess Bride. The Dread Pirate Roberts was the owner and administrator of Silk Road, a wildly successful online bazaar where people bought and sold illegal goods–primarily drugs but also fake IDs, fireworks and hacking software. They could do this without getting caught because Silk Road was located in a little-known region of the Internet called the Deep Web.

Technically the Deep Web refers to the collection of all the websites and databases that search engines like Google don’t or can’t index, which in terms of the sheer volume of information is many times larger than the Web as we know it. But more loosely, the Deep Web is a specific branch of the Internet that’s distinguished by that increasingly rare commodity: complete anonymity. Nothing you do on the Deep Web can be associated with your real-world identity, unless you choose it to be. Most people never see it, though the software you need to access it is free and takes less than three minutes to download and install. If there’s a part of the grid that can be considered off the grid, it’s the Deep Web.

Read the rest of the story, here in the TIME Vault: The Deep Web