Frying The Onion Ring: NSA Databases ALL German Tor Users

While the NSA claims to only target a small number of internet users for its creepy peeping (and then, only for our "security"), recent discoveries have shown that their methods of determining who is watch-worthy is more than just a few naughty buzzwords you may have typed into Google. Data from targeted users is compiled and stored indefinitely...with some targets (particularly those overseas) having done nothing more than use the Tor anonymizing software.

Tor, an "onion" type encryption service, anonymizes one by rerouting information through various proxy servers. This is extremely difficult to trace and henceforth infuriating to the NSA. Rather than do actual investigations to decide who may actually be committing cybercrimes via this software, the NSA instead chooses to target anyone who has downloaded the program to their computer. They are apparently under the assumption that those of us who are smart enough to recognize what is going on and going wrong are likely criminals for taking the "crazy" steps to protect ourselves.

This revelation, as reported by boingboing.com, first emerged from the investigations of several intrepid German reporters. The leak of this information is thought to have been divulged post-Snowden, leading reporter Corey Doctorow to speculate, "The existence of a potential second source means that Snowden may have inspired some of his former colleagues to take a long, hard look at the agency's cavalier attitude to the law and decency."  Yet while the total Tor-based "terrorist" list is currently thought only to apply to German users, one would not be surprised if this did or will soon apply to Tor users in America.

If only one good apple could change the whole rotten barrel. At least we still have a barrel of...onions?  Stinking as the whole operation is, the powers that be can't simply stop our freedom of thought just yet.

Electric Excellence For Everyone: Tesla's Affordable Model E

The changing dynamics of sustainable transportation will hopefully soon allow our dependency on fossil fuels to decline dramatically. Now, electric car manufacturers Tesla are taking steps to bring their technology to different levels of the market.

The Tesla Model E is a new and more affordable electric car that could raise the industry's appeal to the masses. As reported by technobuffalo.com, Tesla VP of engineering Chris Porritt indicated "the E will be priced to compete with Audi’s A4 sedan and BMW’s compact 3 series, which both cost a little over $30,000 new." The Model E is significantly less expensive than their flagship $70,000 Model S automobile, thanks to developments made by Tesla's Gigafactory that will enable the creation of lower-cost batteries.

Tesla also plans to release an SUV, the Model X, due out in the second quarter of 2015. The company has refused to comment on any prospective release date for hoverboards.

Image courtesy www.gas2.org.

Down With The Sickness: Your Online Health Records Are Easily Hackable

Your medical records from personal doctors and hospitals are increasingly going electronic, both due to ease of accessibility for providers and the stimulus of $24 billion dollars in federal incentive money (thanks to the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act.)  Now, serious worries are raised that this sensitive information's accessibility isn't being protected well enough from threats.

According to the Identify Theft Resource Center, over half of the 353 tracked breaches in 2014 were from the health sector.  Criminal attacks on health data are on the rise, with the target information (such as a full health profile on a certain person) selling for $500 on the black market.  This information can be used to steal an identity to gain care, or worse, commit blackmail with the sensitive material.  A Ponemon report claimed 313,000 people were health-record heist victims in 2013, up 19 percent from the previous year.

Politico.com reports that security ratings firm BitSight has rated the health care industry as the least prepared for a cyber attack, thanks in part to their high volume of threats and slow response time.  Also, about half of health systems surveyed in an annual review by the Health Information Management Systems Society indicated that they spent 3 percent or less of their IT budgets on security.

Even the Feds admit this is a weak system.  The health industry “is not as resilient to cyber intrusions compared to the financial and retail sectors, therefore the possibility of increased cyber intrusions is likely,” according to a warning released by the FBI.

Since 2009, more than 31.6 million individuals (a tenth of the United States) have had their medical records exposed through some form of malfeasance or outright theft, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

OnionWare Anonymity Software Makes Spies Cry: New Secure Filesharing Service Expertly Thwarts Middlemen

With privacy issues becoming more and more critical in modern life, it is important to retain a feeling of security when dealing with one's major online documents. More than simple spied-on social media or intercepted emails, having a means to store and transfer large files online in a private manner is the focus of a new anonymity software.

Inspired by NSA patriot Edward Snowden, the new OnionWare technology uses the super-secure Tor network to thwart prying eyes, then establishes a temporary website on the user's computer. This eliminates the "middleman" of other filesharing services like Dropbox, which could be infiltrated by the government at any point. Using Onionware and Tor, a secure password and URL are exchanged peer-to-peer, and once the desired files are downloaded by the recipient, the temporary site is deleted permanently.

Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, lauded the new technology, telling www.digitaljournal.com that, "Peer-to-peer offers no convenient mechanism for centralized surveillance or censorship. By design, there's usually no middleman that can easily record metadata about transfers—who uploaded and downloaded what, when, and from where—or block those transfers...recording all of it would require a dragnet effort, not a simple request for a log file from a centralized service provider."

The software was developed by tech analyst and cryptography/cybersecurity crusader Micah Lee while trying to expedite the secure transfer of files between Edward Snowden and journalists David Miranda and Glenn Greenwald, whose own files came under government scrutiny once the Snowden leaks were exposed.

Energy Companies E-Sabotaged? Dragonfly Cyberattacks Target Industrial Control Systems

Beginning by targeting defense and aerospace companies in 2011, the online organization called Dragonfly has now changed its target to American and European energy companies. The cyberattackers, thought to be members of a government agency due to their high degree of technological prowess, wreak computerized havoc on industrial control systems (ICS) of petroleum pipelines as well as ICS all over the energy grid (including energy industry industrial equipment providers.)

The operation was multifaceted and well-funded. According to Symantec.com, "The group initially began sending malware in phishing emails to personnel in target firms. Later, the group added watering hole attacks to its offensive, compromising websites likely to be visited by those working in energy in order to redirect them to websites hosting an exploit kit. The exploit kit in turn delivered malware to the victim’s computer. The third phase of the campaign was the Trojanizing of legitimate software bundles belonging to three different ICS equipment manufacturers."

Symantec was quick to offer solutions to protect computer systems from these attacks, which resemble the Stuxnet virus (aimed at the Iranian nuclear program, it was the first major malware ICS sabotage.) The goal of the recent attacks was further-reaching, intending to achieve a level of cyberespionage that could play a major role in sabotaging any of the infected systems.

From Blind To Bionic: New Technology Enables A Chance At Sight

Slowly watching one's senses fail is a sense of horror unlike any other. Now, visually, this can be somewhat curtailed thanks to the new bionic-eye invention, the Argus II.

Recently implanted with resounding success on blind American Roger Pontz, the Argus II is not perfect, but enables tremendous new capabilities in the visualization of light and dark differentiation. This enables Pontz to identify people, different locations, and sudden changes in environment far more accurately than he had before. As a teenager, Pontz had begun manifesting symptoms of retinitis pigmentosa, where the eye's retinas fail to transmit light patterns to the brain, and at age 40 he was fully blind.

Then, a virtual miracle occurred in the form of the Argus II technology. The Argus II system consists of a video camera mounted in a pair of glasses, which beams images to an small artificial retina implanted at the back of the eye. That retina then communicates the signals with the brain via cell-stimulating electrical pulses.

Although Pontz, the second American to undergo the Argus II implantation, had to relearn how to process visual signals using the new device, he lauded the results. Pontz told CNN, "It's been pretty awesome," he says. "I can tell when my grandson runs around the house, I can tell when people step in front of me, I can tell when my wife had on a white top versus dark bottoms, vice versa. I could follow my mom around on Easter; she had a light top on. Every day it's something small but something different."

Eyes on the prize:  the Argus II's optical elements.

Telepresence: The Good Kind Of Mind Control

Paralysis used to mean being condemned to a life of immobility. Now, thanks to amazing technological breakthroughs, we not only have the ability to restore the power of motion to human beings, but will soon be able to utilize the same "telepresent" technology to operate robotic elements on other worlds.

This week, for the first time ever, a paralyzed young man was able to have mobility and even a level of dexterity restored to his arm, thanks to a microchip embedded in his brain. The research team, comprised of doctors from Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center and engineers from the non-profit research center Battelle, had expected their microchip to enable motion in one finger of the paralyzed 23-year old Ian Burkhart. Stunningly, Burkhart was able to not only open and close his entire hand, but was capable of summoning the dexterity to pick up a spoon.

Burkhart had been paralyzed from the chest down for the last four years.

The fascinating new technology that enabled this breakthrough is called the Neurobridge. Starting with a .15-inch-wide chip implanted in the skull, the Neurobridge "reads" thoughts via 96 electrodes and sends them to a sleeve of receptor electrodes on the wearer's limb, travelling via an external skull-socket not unlike the humans' plug-in ports seen in the "Matrix" movies.

Thank to the success, Burkhart's surgeon, Dr. Ali Rezai, told the Telegraph UK, "I do believe there will be a day coming soon when somebody who's got a disability – being a quadriplegic or somebody with a stroke, somebody with any kind of brain injury – can use the power of their mind and by thinking, be able to move their arms or legs.”

                                           

The basics of the Neurobridge, as shown by www.battelle.org.

Outstanding as it is, this may be only the beginning for telepresent technology. Another organization increasingly interested in mind-powered motion is none other than NASA, who feel the technology could be applied to enabling robotic elements for complex tasks in some of the most remote places possible.

At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, a series of experiments for robot-human interfaces have been taking place, aiming to make telepresence a feature of future spaceflight. Currently projects are underway using video-game technology like Xbox Kinect and Oculus Rift to manipulate robotic avatars in virtual reality, with the goal of someday allowing a human to operate them from afar. The head of JPL's Planning Software Systems Group, NASA's Jeff Norris told www.medium.com:

"We want to go to a lot of different places. Mars is interesting, and we want to go there very much, but there are so many other places in the solar system. The ability to build a robot that is perfectly suited to a potentially very hazardous environment, that’s going to go swimming in the rains of Saturn, or something like that. The ability to build a robot that is optimized for that task, and then to control it in a way that makes you feel like you are there, to me feels like a very powerful competence. Because, here we are, able to use technologies that make us feel present in that environment, but in a way of inhabiting a robotic avatar that is perfectly attuned to that environment. That’s pretty phenomenal."

Beyond the virtual realm, NASA's plans to make telepresence a facet of full-on "telexploration" are already well underway. Robonaut, the humanoid robot installed on the International Space Station, can be controlled telepresently by human operators on earth, expressing 43 degrees of "freedom" via helmet-mounted units, specialized gloves, and posture-positioning trackers. According to NASA, "The goal of telepresence control is to provide an intuitive, unobtrusive, accurate and low-cost method for tracking operator motions and communicating them to the robotic system."

While NASA's plans for spacecraft and robotic control don't yet include a chip in the brain, it continues to improve on the technology that will make the virtual and actual uses of telepresence more immersive, realistic, and dexterous. New algorithms, camera-based tracking, and magnetic sensors will all add to and improve the ability to manipulate elements like Robonaut or other specialized machinery.

The concept of telepresence has been around in science fiction for as long as the genre has existed, but the term itself was coined in 1980 by MIT professor and robotics engineer Marvin Minsky. He theorized that telepresent robots would, in the 21st century, be critical operational elements for dangerous tasks like mining, the maintenance of oil disasters, or even serious trouble like nuclear reactor meltdowns. In his Omni magazine article "Telepresence: A Manifesto", Minsky states that when faced with the challenge of building "unbreakable" reactor parts (that will eventually someday require repair) versus building with realistic material lifespans that could be fixed via robotic telepresence, "I think the better extreme is to build modular systems that permit periodic inspection, maintenance, and repair. Telepresence would prevent crises before they could arise."

Applying this same reasoning to the space program could keep costs in check while maintaining a high standard of operational capability during missions. As for humans, integrated cranial telepresence could restore "mission capability" to damaged limbs. That does not mean the technology isn't still a little creepy in its formative stages, particularly if one wants to be "emotionally" telepresent.

TELL ME YOUR SECRETS:  the Telenoid wants to talk with you.  Image courtesy Ars Electronica.

The Telenoid, a telepresently-operated robot intended for advanced video conferencing, is able to mimic the eye, mouth, and upper body movements of its user, simulating the major tenets of what humans perceive physically as "emotions." Created by Japanese robotics engineer Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro, this is an interesting attempt at sharing your feelings with faraway friends. While the Telenoid's pale, spectral presence is still a bit eerie to be considered a good substitute for a human interaction, achievements in android avatar technology in the future may allow for more realistic robotic experiences. While the emotional components of telepresence may still fall short, in the meantime, the physical elements of the technology are now proven to produce results, and disabled humans like Ian Burkhart and others can now hopefully use the technology to at least physically improve themselves.

Telepresence is undoubtedly a fine facet of the future now, and as we continue to map the human brain and unlock its secrets, perhaps externally beaming our thoughts out to our limbs (or those of robots under our command) will surpass many of humanity's previously-known physical limits. Though it seems nearly like movie magic at the present, future developments will branch out abundantly thanks to these current experiments. As Robert Heinlein said when first theorizing about telepresence in his story "Waldo & Magic, Inc.", "Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do."

Telepresent Demolition Derby on the moon soon?