Monday, May 12, 2014
Is Big Media A Form Of Parasite That Is Infecting Our Brains?
It’s “invasion of the body snatchers” all over again!
Social networking study reveals four-year ‘Game of Thrones’ like chimpanzee war
PICTURE the scene: a weak leader is struggling to hold onto power as ambitious upstarts plot to take over. As tensions rise, the community splits and the killing begins. The war will last for years.No, this isn't the storyline of an HBO fantasy drama, but real events involving chimps in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. A look at the social fragmentation that led to a four-year war in the 1970s now reveals similarities between the ways chimpanzee and human societies break down.
Jane Goodall has been studying the chimpanzees of Gombe for over 50 years. During the early 1970s the group appeared to split in two, and friendliness was replaced by fighting. So extreme and sustained was the aggression that Goodall dubbed it a war.
Joseph Feldblum at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues have re-examined Goodall's field notes from the chimp feeding station she established at Gombe to work out what led to the conflict.
In the past, researchers have estimated the strength of social ties based on the amount of time two chimps spent together at the station. But the notes are so detailed that Feldblum could get a better idea of each chimp's social ties, for instance, by considering if the chimps arrived at the same time and from the same direction.
His team then plugged this data into software that can describe the chimps' social network. They did this for several periods between 1968 and 1972, revealing when the nature of the network changed.
The results suggest that the Gombe community was united until 1971. Then the chimps suddenly split into two groups – one based in the north, one in the south – that spent less time socialising with each other. Feldblum presented the work at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting in Calgary, Canada, last month.
It's hard to say what caused the split, but a senior male called Leakey died at the end of 1970. "As soon as Leakey died they started splitting," says Feldblum. "He seems to have been a bridge between the northern and southern chimps."
After Leakey's death a chimp called Humphrey became alpha male, but he was weak and faced pressure from two brothers from the south, Hugh and Charlie. The other chimps began to follow either Humphrey or the brothers. The battle began.
Over four years Humphrey's group destroyed the brothers' group, and the seven rebel males died or vanished. Groups of males would slip into rebel territory and savagely beat a single chimp.
It was possible to predict which group a chimp joined by looking at their preferred social contacts before the split, says Feldblum. This social fragmentation resembles human societies, he says, pointing to "an iconic study in sociology", Zachary's karate club, which showed how tensions among members of the club led it to split into two. Here, too, it was easy to predict how the group split.
That means chimp societies might help us understand how human-like societies evolve. More clues might come from New World spider monkeys, the only other primate that seems to behave similarly, says Anthony Di Fiore at the University of Texas at Austin. "There must be some ecological reason why they have converged on the same pattern of social organisation [as humans]."
Unfortunately, the Gombe war is the only known chimp group split, says Feldblum. Splits are rare; genetics suggests the groups can last for centuries (Journal of Human Evolution, doi.org/smp).
This article appeared in print under the headline "Secrets of the only known chimp war"
h/t http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229682.600-only-known-chimp-war-reveals-how-societies-splinter.html#.U28frvldUrW
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Federal Agents Seek to Loosen Rules on Hacking Computers
Can we really trust the Federal Government not to target political opponents like they did with the IRS? NO.
By Chris Strohm
A U.S. proposal to expand the U.S. Justice Department’s ability to hack into computers during criminal investigations is furthering tension in the debate over how to balance privacy rights with the need to keep the country safe.
A committee of judges that sets national policy governing criminal investigations will try to sort through it all. It’s weighing a proposal made public yesterday that would give federal agents greater leeway to secretly access suspected criminals’ computers in bunches, not simply one at a time.
The underlying goal is to take rules written for searching property and modernize them for the Internet age. The proposal arrives at a precipitous time for a government still managing backlash to electronic spying by the National Security Agency that was exposed last year by contractor Edward Snowden.
“What I think we’re looking for as a society is a way to investigate crime while limiting the exposure of information that should be kept private,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University.
While the intent of the proposal is reasonable, the idea of law enforcement potentially placing malware on computers of innocent Americans that can access personal data is a cause for concern, he said.
“I don’t think many Americans would be comfortable with the government sending code onto their computers without their knowledge or consent,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a telephone interview. “The power they’re seeking is certainly a broad one.”
Traditional Rules
Child pornographers and other criminals are increasingly using technology to shield their identities, according to the department. Such technology includes proxy servers that mask the true Internet addresses of a criminal’s computer, or the use of hundreds or thousands of compromised computers known as a botnet.
Still, privacy advocates contend the more aggressive hacking powers may violate rights of the innocent.
“We have real concerns about allowing the police too much ability to search with too little oversight,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group. The DOJ proposal would “dramatically expand the reach of federal prosecutors and investigators.”
The rule would lift the geographical restriction on warrants for computer investigations, permit agents to remotely access computers when locations have been “concealed through technological means,” and allow a single warrant for searches of certain computers located in five or more judicial districts.
Court Review
“This proposal ensures that courts can be asked to review warrant applications in situations where it is currently unclear what judge has that authority,” a Justice Department spokesman, Peter Carr, said in an e-mailed statement. “The proposal makes explicit that it does not change the traditional rules governing probable cause and notice.”
The proposal was published yesterday for consideration by the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, commonly called the standing committee, which meets at the end of the month.
“The proposed amendment would enable investigators to conduct a search and seize electronically stored information by remotely installing software on a large number of affected victim computers pursuant to one warrant issued by a single judge,” according to an analysis by the committee. “The current rule, in contrast, requires obtaining multiple warrants to do so, in each of the many districts in which an affected computer may be located.”
Long Road
It has a long way to go before getting approval.
If the standing committee agrees to take up the matter, the proposal would be opened for public comment in August for six months. It could be amended before the comment period begins and would eventually need to be reviewed by Congress for changes.
The Justice Department includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Federal agents now can obtain warrants allowing them to send malicious software over the Internet to computers suspected of being used in crimes. However, the law limits those remote searches to the district where the judge who issued the warrant is located, when the actual locations of computers used in crimes may not be known.
Botnet computers could be spread across many or all of the nation’s 94 judicial districts. Going after them requires judges in each different district to issue warrants, a time consuming process that creates delays and wastes investigative resources, according to the Justice Department.
30-Day Secrecy
The government can keep these so-called remote access operations secret from their target for as many as 30 days -- longer if an extension is approved by a judge.
Obtaining a single warrant to use malware to search potentially thousands of computers in unknown locations would violate constitutional requirements that court-authorized searches be narrow and particular, Fakhoury of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
He said he questions whether investigators could use the new rule to bypass legal requirements in accessing data stored online, such as within Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Drive cloud service or Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Outlook e-mail accounts.
A Google spokeswoman, Niki Christoff, and a Microsoft spokeswoman, Kathy Roeder, said their companies declined to comment.
Only Option
The department must describe the computer it wants to target with as much detail as possible. For example, an investigator may be covertly communicating with a suspected child molester and know an IP address, and then obtain a warrant to use malware to find the actual location. In the case of botnets, malware might be used to try to free the compromised computers from a criminal’s control.
The Justice Department’s effort appears to be in response to an April 2013 court ruling denying a search warrant for a remote-access operation, said Wessler, with the ACLU.
In that case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith of the Southern District of Texas picked apart the government’s request to secretly install software on an unknown computer in an unknown location that could extract stored electronic records and even activate the computer’s built-in camera.
Smith said the computer could be located in a public place or used by family members or friends not involved in illegal activity, and that the request didn’t satisfy constitutional requirements.
Wessler said the government should be required to exhaust other options for finding and accessing computers suspected of being used in crimes, such as serving individual warrants on Internet service providers.
A U.S. proposal to expand the U.S. Justice Department’s ability to hack into computers during criminal investigations is furthering tension in the debate over how to balance privacy rights with the need to keep the country safe.
A committee of judges that sets national policy governing criminal investigations will try to sort through it all. It’s weighing a proposal made public yesterday that would give federal agents greater leeway to secretly access suspected criminals’ computers in bunches, not simply one at a time.
The underlying goal is to take rules written for searching property and modernize them for the Internet age. The proposal arrives at a precipitous time for a government still managing backlash to electronic spying by the National Security Agency that was exposed last year by contractor Edward Snowden.
“What I think we’re looking for as a society is a way to investigate crime while limiting the exposure of information that should be kept private,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University.
While the intent of the proposal is reasonable, the idea of law enforcement potentially placing malware on computers of innocent Americans that can access personal data is a cause for concern, he said.
“I don’t think many Americans would be comfortable with the government sending code onto their computers without their knowledge or consent,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a telephone interview. “The power they’re seeking is certainly a broad one.”
Traditional Rules
Child pornographers and other criminals are increasingly using technology to shield their identities, according to the department. Such technology includes proxy servers that mask the true Internet addresses of a criminal’s computer, or the use of hundreds or thousands of compromised computers known as a botnet.
Still, privacy advocates contend the more aggressive hacking powers may violate rights of the innocent.
“We have real concerns about allowing the police too much ability to search with too little oversight,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group. The DOJ proposal would “dramatically expand the reach of federal prosecutors and investigators.”
The rule would lift the geographical restriction on warrants for computer investigations, permit agents to remotely access computers when locations have been “concealed through technological means,” and allow a single warrant for searches of certain computers located in five or more judicial districts.
Court Review
“This proposal ensures that courts can be asked to review warrant applications in situations where it is currently unclear what judge has that authority,” a Justice Department spokesman, Peter Carr, said in an e-mailed statement. “The proposal makes explicit that it does not change the traditional rules governing probable cause and notice.”
The proposal was published yesterday for consideration by the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, commonly called the standing committee, which meets at the end of the month.
“The proposed amendment would enable investigators to conduct a search and seize electronically stored information by remotely installing software on a large number of affected victim computers pursuant to one warrant issued by a single judge,” according to an analysis by the committee. “The current rule, in contrast, requires obtaining multiple warrants to do so, in each of the many districts in which an affected computer may be located.”
Long Road
It has a long way to go before getting approval.
If the standing committee agrees to take up the matter, the proposal would be opened for public comment in August for six months. It could be amended before the comment period begins and would eventually need to be reviewed by Congress for changes.
The Justice Department includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Federal agents now can obtain warrants allowing them to send malicious software over the Internet to computers suspected of being used in crimes. However, the law limits those remote searches to the district where the judge who issued the warrant is located, when the actual locations of computers used in crimes may not be known.
Botnet computers could be spread across many or all of the nation’s 94 judicial districts. Going after them requires judges in each different district to issue warrants, a time consuming process that creates delays and wastes investigative resources, according to the Justice Department.
30-Day Secrecy
The government can keep these so-called remote access operations secret from their target for as many as 30 days -- longer if an extension is approved by a judge.
Obtaining a single warrant to use malware to search potentially thousands of computers in unknown locations would violate constitutional requirements that court-authorized searches be narrow and particular, Fakhoury of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.
He said he questions whether investigators could use the new rule to bypass legal requirements in accessing data stored online, such as within Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Drive cloud service or Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Outlook e-mail accounts.
A Google spokeswoman, Niki Christoff, and a Microsoft spokeswoman, Kathy Roeder, said their companies declined to comment.
Only Option
The department must describe the computer it wants to target with as much detail as possible. For example, an investigator may be covertly communicating with a suspected child molester and know an IP address, and then obtain a warrant to use malware to find the actual location. In the case of botnets, malware might be used to try to free the compromised computers from a criminal’s control.
The Justice Department’s effort appears to be in response to an April 2013 court ruling denying a search warrant for a remote-access operation, said Wessler, with the ACLU.
In that case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith of the Southern District of Texas picked apart the government’s request to secretly install software on an unknown computer in an unknown location that could extract stored electronic records and even activate the computer’s built-in camera.
Smith said the computer could be located in a public place or used by family members or friends not involved in illegal activity, and that the request didn’t satisfy constitutional requirements.
Wessler said the government should be required to exhaust other options for finding and accessing computers suspected of being used in crimes, such as serving individual warrants on Internet service providers.
Morning Links 5-12-2014
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Blogs With Rule 5 Links
These Blogs Provide Links To Rule 5 Sites:
The Pirate's Cove has: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup
Proof Positive has: Best Of Web Link Around
The Woodsterman has: Rule 5 Woodsterman Style
Blackmailers Don't Shoot has: Rule 5 Linkfest
The Other McCain has: Rule 5 Sunday
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