will there be 'wild card' events worldwide in 2012 or beyond? from seattle exopolitics examiner: There is converging objective predictive evidence, expert opinion, exopolitical policy analysis, and extraterrestrial contactee communications supporting a hypothesis that large scale “wild card” event(s), involving mass extraterrestrial (UFO) sightings or landings over major urban or other visible centers on the planet for peaceful purposes may occur during the period leading up to 2011-12 or beyond. In future studies, John Petersen author of 'Out of The Blue - How to Anticipate Big Future Surprises' defines “wild card” events as “Low Probability, High Impact events that, were they to occur, would severely impact the human condition."
obama says cloning dangerous & wrong from ap: President Barack Obama says human cloning is "dangerous, profoundly wrong" and has no place in society. Obama made the comments as he was signing an executive order that will allow federal spending on embryonic stem cell research. Some critics say the research can lead to human cloning. Obama said the government will develop strict guidelines for the research because misuse or abuse is unacceptable. He said he would ensure that the government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction.
obama declares ip treaty a 'national security' secret from threat level: President Barack Obama came into office in January promising a new era of openness. But now, like Bush before him, Obama is playing the national security card to hide details of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [36kb PDF] being negotiated across the globe... If ratified,leaked documentsposted on WikiLeaks and othercommentssuggest the proposed trade accord would criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, subject iPods to border searches and allow internet service providers to monitor their customers' communications.
bbc hacks into thousands of computers from techradar: The BBC has deliberately hacked into 22,000 PCs to prove the power of botnets, and the damage that can be done with a network of compromised computers. Click – BBC News' technology programme – with the help of anti-virus company Prevx, took over thousands of computers in order to demonstrate a growing problem in the modern world. Botnets are networks of computers that have been compromised by cyber-criminals and can be used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on servers or, most commonly, to send out the deluge of spam that lands in the world's inboxes daily.
from russia today: Neither the lives of the ISS crew members nor the operation of the station were endangered by a space junk incident, according to Yury Karash, Russian space policy expert.
blackwater's prince cuts & runs from danger room: The rebranding of Blackwater continues. First, the mercenary firm expands beyond its core, guns-for-hire business. Then, the company changes its name - to the inscrutable, barely-pronounceable "Xe." The latest: Outspoken and controversial firm founder Erik Prince announces he's stepping down as CEO. "I'm a little worn out by the whole thing, the politics of it all," Prince tells the Wall Street Journal. "Me not being part of the equation reduces the 'X' on the thing." I guess that means the company is now called "e?"
report: diebold system has 'delete' button for erasing audit logs from threat level: After three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during November's presidential election. But the most startling information in the state's 13-page report [156kb PDF] is not why the system lost votes, which Wired.com previously covered in detail, but that some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (Gems), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system. Auditing logs are required under the federal voting-system guidelines, which are used to test and qualify voting systems for use in elections. The logs record changes and other events that occur on voting systems to ensure the integrity of elections and help determine what occurred in a system when something goes wrong. "Deleting a log is something that you would only do in de-commissioning a system you're no longer using or perhaps in a testing scenario," said Princeton University computer scientist Ed Felten, who has studied voting systems extensively. "But in normal operation, the log should always be kept."
finland's parliament passes 'lex nokia' bill from yle: Parliament has passed the controversial reforms to the data protection law, the so-called "Lex Nokia" bill. The vote was 96 for, 56 against. The hotly debated reforms caused arguments within the government coalition, but also caused a crack in the Green League. Notably, three Green MPs who had previously voted against the bill abstained from the vote: Johanna Karimäki, Ville Niinistö and Kirsi Ojansuu. They were just three of the 47 parliamentarians who decided not to cast a vote. The bill, dubbed "Lex Nokia" because of the mobile phone giant's perceived advocacy for the law, angered unions and privacy rights advocates.
army pitches 'future' killers as job-savers from danger room: In late January, the Air Force's defense contractor buddies started pushing their pet project, the Raptor stealth fighter jet, as a jobs program. "Without it, more than 95,000 jobs are at risk," proclaimed one online ad. (The New America Foundation figures the real number is more like 35,000. You get the idea, though.) But at least the Air Force had the good sense to step back and let its industrial partners make the case for their weapons-as-stimulus. The Army wasn't so slick, alas. The Army is trying hard to keep Future Combat Systems - its massive effort to make the force lighter, more-lethal, and better-networked - away from the budget axe. During the presidential campaign, both the Obama and McCain camps talked about slowing down or killing the project. Despite some successes, FCS has become a poster child in Washington for Pentagon bloat and overreach.
russian general says US may have planned satellite collision from ria novosti: A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said. According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia. However, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007... Shershnev claims the U.S. military decided to continue with the project to "develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices." The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
a billion over budget, nasa gets a bilion more from stimulus from ap: NASA can land a spacecraft on a peanut-shaped asteroid 150 million miles away, but it doesn't come close to hitting the budget target for building its spacecraft, according to congressional auditors. NASA's top officials know it and even joke about it. This week auditors found that on nine projects alone NASA is nearly $1.1 billion over cost estimates that were set in the last couple of years. Congress' financial watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, reviewed NASA's newest big-money projects and found most were either over budget, late or both. That doesn't include two of NASA's largest spending projects whose costs have wildly fluctuated and still aren't firm - replacements for the space shuttle fleet and Hubble Space Telescope. Historically, overruns have caused NASA to run low on money, forcing it to shelve or delay other projects. Often, the agency just asks taxpayers for more money. In fact, NASA got $1 billion from the new stimulus package. It's to be spent on climate-watching satellites and exploration among other things. "Getting an extra infusion of money doesn't necessarily mean you have a capability to spend it well," said Cristina Chaplain, GAO's acquisitions chief who wrote the study [2.8mb PDF].
task force urges broader role for nuclear labs from washington post: The nation's nuclear weapons laboratories would be spun out of the Energy Department and become the center of an independent Agency for National Security Applications under a proposal to be released today by a bipartisan task force formed by the Stimson Center, a research organization devoted to security issues. Changing the status and making wider use of Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories for other research would help reestablish and assure "the nation's global science and technology leadership in the 21st century," said the task force report. At present, the labs are directed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semiautonomous part of the Energy Department. "This action would enable the laboratories to remain trusted third party advisors as well as providers of capabilities, but it would initiate a full transformation from a Cold War, industrial age mindset and culture," according to the task force, which was chaired by Francis Fragos Townsend, who was an assistant to President George W. Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, and retired Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, who was deputy national security adviser to President Bill Clinton. The proposal comes at a time when the future of the nation's multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons complex is under review.
video: robo-beast & human troops march together from danger room: We've seen BigDog, the military's alarmingly-lifelike robotic quadruped, climb over hills, stomp through snow, and survive swift kicks to the chops. Now, for the first time, we're seeing it on patrol, with human soldiers. Mass High Tech uncovers this video of the BigDog going through exercises at Ft. Benning, Georgia. It comes on the heels of the robo-beast's longest walk yet - a 12.8 mile hike, following a series of GPS waypoints. Soldiers at Ft. Benning seemed intrigued by the idea of a mechanical pack mule that could one day carry some of their load.
global warming rocket with nasa satellite crashes from ap: A rocket carrying a NASA satellite crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after a failed launch early Tuesday, ending a $280 million mission to track global warming from space. The Taurus XL rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off just before 2 a.m. from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. But minutes later, a cover protecting the satellite during launch failed to separate from the rocket, a preliminary investigation found. The 986-pound satellite was supposed to be placed into an orbit some 400 miles high to track carbon dioxide emissions. The project was nine years in the making, and the mission was supposed to last two years. Scientists currently depend on 282 land-based stations - and scattered instrumented aircraft flights - to monitor carbon dioxide at low altitudes. "Certainly for the science community it's a huge disappointment," said John Brunschwyler, Taurus project manager for Orbital Sciences Corp., which built the rocket and satellite. "It's taken so long to get here."
officials: how were bird flu viruses sent to unsuspecting labs? from canadian press: Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made "experimental virus material" based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company. That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control. Though it appears none of the 36 or 37 people who were exposed to the contaminated product became infected, the incident is being described as "a serious error" on the part of Baxter, which is on the brink of securing a European licence for an H5N1 vaccine. That vaccine is made at a different facility, in the Czech Republic. "For this particular incident ... the horse did not get out (of the barn)," Dr. Angus Nicoll of the ECDC said from Stockholm. "But that doesn't mean that we and WHO and the European Commission and the others aren't taking it as seriously as you would any laboratory accident with dangerous pathogens - which you have here."
US energy dept cannot account for nuclear materials at 15 locations from global security newswire: A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records. That's just one of the findings of a report released [2.3mb PDF] yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."
analyzing body language to detect terrorists & tourists from itbusiness: As soon as you walk into the airport, the machines are watching. Are you a tourist - or a terrorist posing as one? As you answer a few questions at the security checkpoint, the systems begin sizing you up. An array of sensors - video, audio, laser, infrared - feeds a stream of real-time data about you to a computer that uses specially developed algorithms to spot suspicious people. The system interprets your gestures and facial expressions, analyzes your voice and virtually probes your body to determine your temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and other physiological characteristics - all in an effort to determine whether you are trying to deceive. Fail the test, and you'll be pulled aside for a more aggressive interrogation and searches. That scenario may sound like science fiction, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is deadly serous about making it a reality.
army preparing to test future combat systems from defence talk: Soldiers and civilians with the Future Combat Systems program at White Sands Missile Range are working overtime preparing to put future Army technology to the test. Soldiers - along with technicians for the companies that produce the various systems that make up FCS - are loading up vehicles with data collection equipment that will be used to test the systems later this year.
cleveland installs downtown surveillance cameras from wkyc: The city is installing 13 new surveillance cameras downtown to send a safety message. Four of the cameras are operating now and nine more will be working by next weekend in time for the city's annual holiday display on Public Square. The city will monitor and control the cameras and record images around the clock. Public Safety Director Martin Flask says the cameras are mounted on poles and have blue strobe lights attached to them so people can see them and feel safe. The wireless system operating the cameras will store images for a month.
license-plate scanning catching crooks & raising privacy worries from arizona republic: Officer David Callister parks his patrol car under a shady interstate overpass, angling his cameras to target a flurry of passing traffic. Then he waits. Infrared units mounted to the front of Callister's vehicle scan the license plates of a Casa Grande firefighter, an Ohio State football fan and everyone else who drives past as he hunts for stolen vehicles. Every plate is photographed, time-stamped, labeled on a GPS map and automatically logged into an Arizona Department of Public Safety database. An electronic voice alerts Callister to stolen vehicles within seconds after they pass, giving him the ability to make quick arrests.
US rolls out 'vicinity rfid' to check id's in moving vehicles from the register: RFID technology that allows the remote identification of travellers in moving vehicles is being rolled out at US land border crossings this month. Crossing points with Canada at Blaine, and with Mexico at Nogales, came online last week, with Buffalo, Detroit and San Ysidro to follow, and a total of 39 planned. The system uses the US PASSport (People, Access Security Service) card, which is intended to operate within the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) for US citizens entering the US via land and sea ports. Using "Vicinity RFID" it can read the cards from a healthy skimming distance of 20-30 feet, but according to the Department of Homeland Security this isn't a problem. The RFID chip on the card doesn't contain any personal information, only a unique identification number, and skimmers wouldn't have access to the data the number matches up with.
uk social services 'set up cctv camera in couple's bedroom' from telegraph: Council staff are said to have spied on the young parents at night as part of a plan to see if they were fit to look after their baby, who was sleeping in another room. The mother and father were forced to cite the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to a private life, before the social services team backed down and agreed to switch off the surveillance camera while they were in bed together. The case is highlighted in a new dossier of human rights abuses carried out against vulnerable and elderly adults in nursing homes and hospitals across Britain. It comes just days after the Government admitted town halls have gone too far in using anti-terror laws to snoop on members of the public.
cynthia mckinney prevented from leaving US from paul joseph watson: Former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has been prevented from leaving the country after she planned to give a speech in Damascus Syria at a Conference being held to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Today, November 23rd, I was slated to give remarks in Damascus, Syria at a Conference being held to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, sadly, the 60th year that the Palestinian people have been denied their Right of Return enshrined in that Universal Declaration. But a funny thing happened to me while at the Atlanta airport on my way to the Conference: I was not allowed to exit the country,” writes McKinney.
military examines role in domestic defense from ap: Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday ordered his top department leaders to conduct a broad review to determine whether the military, National Guard and Reserve can adequately deal with domestic disasters and whether they have the training and equipment to defend the homeland. The 41-page memo signaled an acknowledgment that the military must better recognize the critical role of the National Guard and Reserves in homeland defense, but stopped short of requiring many specific policy changes. His memo comes in the wake of a stinging 400-page independent commission report that concluded the military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and that National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job.
US army to equip national guard unit with future combat system aerial robots from usarmy: The Army's commitment to equipping its total force with Future Combat System (FCS) capabilities continues as the first Army National Guard unit - the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the Pennsylvania National Guard begins training next month with the FCS-developed gasoline-powered Micro Air Vehicle (gMAV) prior to the unit's deployment to Iraq in January.
US govt taps facebook, google & mtv to 'fight terrorism' from afp: The US State Department announced plans on Monday to promote online youth groups as a new and powerful way to fight crime, political oppression and terrorism. Drawing inspiration from a movement against FARC rebels in Colombia, the State Department is joining forces with Facebook, Google, MTV, Howcast and others in New York City next week to get the "ball rolling." It said 17 groups from South Africa, Britain and the Middle East which have an online presence like the "Million Voices Against the FARC" will attend a conference at Columbia University Law School from December 3-5.
robot may be more 'humane' soldier from iht: In the heat of battle, their minds clouded by fear, anger or vengefulness, even the best-trained soldiers can act in ways that violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement. Now some researchers suggest that robots could do better. "My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can," said Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, who is designing software for battlefield robots under contract with the U.S. Army. "That's the case I make."
super soldiers & beyond from discover magazine: The military’s most farseeing agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, required the services of Eleventh Hour’s Jacob Hood in last night’s episode to figure who violently killed some test-chimps and a veterinarian in the agency’s super soldier program. It seems a mad scientist had found some way to increase the size of a human amygdala, which led the soldier to have extreme, and unthinking, fight-or-flight reactions. Whenever someone approached this super soldier in a threatening way, he reacted with extreme prejudice. Naturally, the mad scientist wasn’t supposed to be testing on people, which is why by the end of the show he was off to prison. But DARPA is pretty serious about improving the, ahem, human component of soldiering. After decades of focusing on machines (like unmanned flying drones, GPS, and Internet), DARPA decided toward the end of the 1990s to focus on improving the actual biology of the soldiers. Contrary to the show, the goal is not extremely obedient killers. The modern military is focused on small teams functioning independently, far from base and reinforcements of any kind. To succeed in this kind of environment, they want to actually increase the ability of soldiers to think creatively, to stay awake longer, and to be physically active longer without becoming tired.
from danger room: With budget tights and tolerance for high-price technology programs growing thin, the Army today is announcing plans to revamp its massive $200 billion modernization effort, called the Future Combat Systems. Like the program itself, the changes are confusing, but appear to consist of plans to accelerate those technologies the Army thinks are most needed in the field and are moving along quickly, like drones, while pushing back those weapons more suited for major military conflict. "Army officials say the revisions could push the program's total price tag even higher, lifting the fortunes of the effort's two main contractors, Boeing Co. and SAIC Inc.," the Wall Street Journal reports... The move is, at least in part, designed to address concerns being raised in Congress about the megalith program, which links together massive amounts of software and hardware. A House committee wants to slice some $200 milllion from the request to fund FCS. That may sound like a lot, but the total request for FCS for fiscal 2009 is about $3.6 billion.
US troops asked if they would shoot american citizens from paul joseph watson: U.S. troops are being trained to conduct round-ups, confiscate guns and shoot American citizens, including their own friends and family members, as part of a long-standing program to prepare for the declaration of martial law, according to a soldier who recently returned from Iraq. We received an e mail from "Scott", a member of a pipefitters union that runs an apprenticeship program called Helmets To Hard Hats, which according to its website, "Is a national program that connects National Guard, Reserve and transitioning active-duty military members with quality career training and employment opportunities within the construction industry."
annual pentagon request: half a trillion & counting from danger room: As expected, the administration's budget request for the Defense Department has topped half a trillion dollars, not counting additional money that would be used to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That a lot of money, even by defense standards. The Pentagon today announced it was requesting "$515.4 billion in discretionary authority for the Department of Defense (DoD), a $35.9 billion or 7.5 percent increase over the enacted level for Fiscal Year 2008." As expected, a good portion of the regular budget it going toward ground forces, including additional funding to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
war is not a video game: fcs follies part2 from spacewar: Every fundamental mistake that was made in the disastrous Future Intelligence Architecture program is now being repeated in the Future Combat Systems projects - the main difference being the FCS will cost at least 50 times as much... Yet the assumption of the Future Combat Systems program, now being developed by the U.S. Army and other U.S. forces at a cost of at least $200 billion is that if an integrated, reliable software that can function well amid the stress of battle in real time can be created, the enhanced control from the center that it offers will make future wars far easier to win.
US & russian citizens want weapons-free outer space from afp: Most Americans and Russians want their governments to ensure a weapons-free outer space and would back a treaty underpinning the move, a poll showed Thursday. Seventy-eight percent of Americans and 67 percent of Russians said their leaderships should refrain from deploying any weapons in space as long as no other country does so, according to the poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org.
future combat system plagued by problems from ee times: Congressional auditors are reportedly questioning the exploding scale of software development required to field the U.S. Army's Future Combat System. In a report in Thursday's (Jan. 24) edition, the Washington Post quoted officials with the congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO) as saying the Army underestimated the size of the software effort... The next largest DoD software development project is the Joint Strike Fighter, at about 23 million lines of code. According to the Post story, investigators said the software portion of the Future Combat System was "started prematurely" and that the Army and prime contractor Boeing Co. "didn't really understand the requirements."
US hires 'fake' soviet weapons experts from presstv: A plan drawn by Washington to divert Soviet Union weapons technology away from other countries has proven to be no more than a US scam. The US Department of Energy had set up a program after the fall of the USSR to keep newly impoverished Soviet scientists from immigrating to wealthy countries hostile to the United States.
homeland security collecting fingerprints at logan airport from dhs.gov: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that it has begun collecting additional fingerprints from international visitors arriving at Boston Logan International Airport (Logan)... "Biometrics have revolutionized our ability to prevent dangerous people from entering the United States since 2004. Our upgrade to 10 fingerprint collection builds on our success, enabling us to focus more attention on stopping potential security risks," US VISIT Director Robert Mocny said.
the pentagon's new lethal weapon from presstv: The US Department of Defense's wide-ranging 'warfighter enhancement program' is preparing grounds for the most lethal weapon ever. Pentagon's 'the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007' puts forward the idea of using different drugs to insulate combat soldiers from the stressful psychological element of killing. The move not only desensitizes them to the horrendous aspect of war, but also maximizes soldiers' lethality by bypassing their moral autonomy.
the pentagon's electronic warfare program from global research: In 2003, then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld signed a document called the Information Operation Roadmapwhich outlined, among other things, the Pentagon's desire to dominate the entire electromagnetic spectrum. If you are unfamiliar with this document, more detail can be found in a previous article here... How exactly do you create a real time electronic battlespace picture? And where exactly is the battlespace? A very similar statement was made in the Project for a New American Century document 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' published in September of 2000 (more about this document here and here.)
pentagon report: high-flying spy drones hobbled from danger room: The Pentagon's highest-flying spy drone isn't able to "consistently" perform, even on a "limited schedule," according to a draft Defense Department report... That is, when they can fly. According to a draft report, from the Defense Department's Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), the current Global Hawk models - so-called "Block 10s" - aren't able to get into the air nearly as often as they ought to. The document was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight and provided to DANGER ROOM.
army expansion plans outlined from ap: The Pentagon will send six new combat brigades to bases in Texas, Georgia, and Colorado in the coming years as part of an extensive plan to increase the size of the Army. As the Army moves to grow by 74,000 soldiers by 2010, officials mapped out decisions to add the combat brigades and eight support units around the country, as well an agreement to delay moving two brigades out of Germany until 2012-2013. The overall effort would cost $66.4 billion in 743 military construction projects through 2013.
nbc4 report on 'chemtrail weather control'
from truthnews: Sure, the government is simply attempting to “mitigate” global warming by way of “geo-engineering.” As noted in the above video, a lab analysis reported high levels of barium contained in California "contrails."
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neo-nazis are in the army now*
pentagon blinds astronomers to 'armageddon'*
from seattle exopolitics examiner: There is converging objective predictive evidence, expert opinion, exopolitical policy analysis, and extraterrestrial contactee communications supporting a hypothesis that large scale “wild card” event(s), involving mass extraterrestrial (UFO) sightings or landings over major urban or other visible centers on the planet for peaceful purposes may occur during the period leading up to 2011-12 or beyond. In future studies, John Petersen author of 'Out of The Blue - How to Anticipate Big Future Surprises' defines “wild card” events as “Low Probability, High Impact events that, were they to occur, would severely impact the human condition."
from space.com: During its more than five-month stint on Mars last year, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander found evidence that liquid water existed at the spacecraft's landing site, some Phoenix team members say. Water is key to all forms of life as we know it and the discovery of liquid water would suggest a greater opportunity for biology on the red planet. The new but controversial conclusion comes from observations of a set of 'little globules' attached to struts on the lander's legs that were photographed by Phoenix's robotic arm camera over the course of the mission...
from danger room: The rebranding of Blackwater continues. First, the mercenary firm expands beyond its core, guns-for-hire business. Then, the company changes its name - to the inscrutable, barely-pronounceable "Xe." The latest: Outspoken and controversial firm founder Erik Prince announces he's stepping down as CEO. "I'm a little worn out by the whole thing, the politics of it all," Prince tells the Wall Street Journal. "Me not being part of the equation reduces the 'X' on the thing." I guess that means the company is now called "e?"
from threat level: After three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during November's presidential election. But the most startling information in the state's 13-page report [156kb PDF] is not why the system lost votes, which Wired.com previously covered in detail, but that some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (Gems), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system. Auditing logs are required under the federal voting-system guidelines, which are used to test and qualify voting systems for use in elections. The logs record changes and other events that occur on voting systems to ensure the integrity of elections and help determine what occurred in a system when something goes wrong. "Deleting a log is something that you would only do in de-commissioning a system you're no longer using or perhaps in a testing scenario," said Princeton University computer scientist Ed Felten, who has studied voting systems extensively. "But in normal operation, the log should always be kept."
from yle: Parliament has passed the controversial reforms to the data protection law, the so-called "Lex Nokia" bill. The vote was 96 for, 56 against. The hotly debated reforms caused arguments within the government coalition, but also caused a crack in the Green League. Notably, three Green MPs who had previously voted against the bill abstained from the vote: Johanna Karimäki, Ville Niinistö and Kirsi Ojansuu. They were just three of the 47 parliamentarians who decided not to cast a vote. The bill, dubbed "Lex Nokia" because of the mobile phone giant's perceived advocacy for the law, angered unions and privacy rights advocates.
from danger room: In late January, the Air Force's defense contractor buddies started pushing their pet project, the Raptor stealth fighter jet, as a jobs program. "Without it, more than 95,000 jobs are at risk," proclaimed one online ad. (The New America Foundation figures the real number is more like 35,000. You get the idea, though.) But at least the Air Force had the good sense to step back and let its industrial partners make the case for their weapons-as-stimulus. The Army wasn't so slick, alas. The Army is trying hard to keep Future Combat Systems - its massive effort to make the force lighter, more-lethal, and better-networked - away from the budget axe. During the presidential campaign, both the Obama and McCain camps talked about slowing down or killing the project. Despite some successes, FCS has become a poster child in Washington for Pentagon bloat and overreach.
from ria novosti: A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said. According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia. However, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007... Shershnev claims the U.S. military decided to continue with the project to "develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices." The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
from ap: NASA can land a spacecraft on a peanut-shaped asteroid 150 million miles away, but it doesn't come close to hitting the budget target for building its spacecraft, according to congressional auditors. NASA's top officials know it and even joke about it. This week auditors found that on nine projects alone NASA is nearly $1.1 billion over cost estimates that were set in the last couple of years. Congress' financial watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, reviewed NASA's newest big-money projects and found most were either over budget, late or both. That doesn't include two of NASA's largest spending projects whose costs have wildly fluctuated and still aren't firm - replacements for the space shuttle fleet and Hubble Space Telescope. Historically, overruns have caused NASA to run low on money, forcing it to shelve or delay other projects. Often, the agency just asks taxpayers for more money. In fact, NASA got $1 billion from the new stimulus package. It's to be spent on climate-watching satellites and exploration among other things. "Getting an extra infusion of money doesn't necessarily mean you have a capability to spend it well," said Cristina Chaplain, GAO's acquisitions chief who wrote the study [2.8mb PDF].
from ap: A rocket carrying a NASA satellite crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after a failed launch early Tuesday, ending a $280 million mission to track global warming from space. The Taurus XL rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off just before 2 a.m. from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. But minutes later, a cover protecting the satellite during launch failed to separate from the rocket, a preliminary investigation found. The 986-pound satellite was supposed to be placed into an orbit some 400 miles high to track carbon dioxide emissions. The project was nine years in the making, and the mission was supposed to last two years. Scientists currently depend on 282 land-based stations - and scattered instrumented aircraft flights - to monitor carbon dioxide at low altitudes. "Certainly for the science community it's a huge disappointment," said John Brunschwyler, Taurus project manager for Orbital Sciences Corp., which built the rocket and satellite. "It's taken so long to get here."
from canadian press: Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made "experimental virus material" based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company. That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control. Though it appears none of the 36 or 37 people who were exposed to the contaminated product became infected, the incident is being described as "a serious error" on the part of Baxter, which is on the brink of securing a European licence for an H5N1 vaccine. That vaccine is made at a different facility, in the Czech Republic. "For this particular incident ... the horse did not get out (of the barn)," Dr. Angus Nicoll of the ECDC said from Stockholm. "But that doesn't mean that we and WHO and the European Commission and the others aren't taking it as seriously as you would any laboratory accident with dangerous pathogens - which you have here."
from paul joseph watons: German intelligence agents have been caught staging a false flag terror attack against an EU building in Kosovo, apparently in an attempt to create a pretext for EU police to be deployed in Kosovo after government leaders rejected the UN-mandated proposal. “Germany declined to comment on on Saturday on reports that three Germans arrested on suspicion of throwing explosives at an EU office in Kosovo were intelligence officers,” reports Reuters. “The explosive charge was thrown on Nov. 14 at the International Civilian Office (ICO), the office of EU Special Representative Pieter Feith, who oversees Kosovo’s governance.” A police source in Kosovo told Reuters: “They are members of the BND”, but gave no further details. German news outlet Der Spiegel named the men as BND intelligence officers. Most reports claimed that the officers had thrown dynamite at the building, while others reported that a bomb was placed near the building.
from arizona republic: Officer David Callister parks his patrol car under a shady interstate overpass, angling his cameras to target a flurry of passing traffic. Then he waits. Infrared units mounted to the front of Callister's vehicle scan the license plates of a Casa Grande firefighter, an Ohio State football fan and everyone else who drives past as he hunts for stolen vehicles. Every plate is photographed, time-stamped, labeled on a GPS map and automatically logged into an Arizona Department of Public Safety database. An electronic voice alerts Callister to stolen vehicles within seconds after they pass, giving him the ability to make quick arrests.
from discover magazine: The military’s most farseeing agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, required the services of Eleventh Hour’s Jacob Hood in last night’s episode to figure who violently killed some test-chimps and a veterinarian in the agency’s super soldier program. It seems a mad scientist had found some way to increase the size of a human amygdala, which led the soldier to have extreme, and unthinking, fight-or-flight reactions. Whenever someone approached this super soldier in a threatening way, he reacted with extreme prejudice. Naturally, the mad scientist wasn’t supposed to be testing on people, which is why by the end of the show he was off to prison. But DARPA is pretty serious about improving the, ahem, human component of soldiering. After decades of focusing on machines (like unmanned flying drones, GPS, and Internet), DARPA decided toward the end of the 1990s to focus on improving the actual biology of the soldiers. Contrary to the show, the goal is not extremely obedient killers. The modern military is focused on small teams functioning independently, far from base and reinforcements of any kind. To succeed in this kind of environment, they want to actually increase the ability of soldiers to think creatively, to stay awake longer, and to be physically active longer without becoming tired.
the bear roars, US collapse continues, terror watch +
from danger room: With budget tights and tolerance for high-price technology programs growing thin, the Army today is announcing plans to revamp its massive $200 billion modernization effort, called the Future Combat Systems. Like the program itself, the changes are confusing, but appear to consist of plans to accelerate those technologies the Army thinks are most needed in the field and are moving along quickly, like drones, while pushing back those weapons more suited for major military conflict. "Army officials say the revisions could push the program's total price tag even higher, lifting the fortunes of the effort's two main contractors, Boeing Co. and SAIC Inc.," the Wall Street Journal reports... The move is, at least in part, designed to address concerns being raised in Congress about the megalith program, which links together massive amounts of software and hardware. A House committee wants to slice some $200 milllion from the request to fund FCS. That may sound like a lot, but the total request for FCS for fiscal 2009 is about $3.6 billion.
from paul joseph watson: U.S. troops are being trained to conduct round-ups, confiscate guns and shoot American citizens, including their own friends and family members, as part of a long-standing program to prepare for the declaration of martial law, according to a soldier who recently returned from Iraq. We received an e mail from "Scott", a member of a pipefitters union that runs an apprenticeship program called Helmets To Hard Hats, which according to its website, "Is a national program that connects National Guard, Reserve and transitioning active-duty military members with quality career training and employment opportunities within the construction industry."
from danger room: As expected, the administration's budget request for the Defense Department has topped half a trillion dollars, not counting additional money that would be used to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That a lot of money, even by defense standards. The Pentagon today announced it was requesting "$515.4 billion in discretionary authority for the Department of Defense (DoD), a $35.9 billion or 7.5 percent increase over the enacted level for Fiscal Year 2008." As expected, a good portion of the regular budget it going toward ground forces, including additional funding to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
from spacewar: Every fundamental mistake that was made in the disastrous Future Intelligence Architecture program is now being repeated in the Future Combat Systems projects - the main difference being the FCS will cost at least 50 times as much... Yet the assumption of the Future Combat Systems program, now being developed by the U.S. Army and other U.S. forces at a cost of at least $200 billion is that if an integrated, reliable software that can function well amid the stress of battle in real time can be created, the enhanced control from the center that it offers will make future wars far easier to win.
from afp: Most Americans and Russians want their governments to ensure a weapons-free outer space and would back a treaty underpinning the move, a poll showed Thursday. Seventy-eight percent of Americans and 67 percent of Russians said their leaderships should refrain from deploying any weapons in space as long as no other country does so, according to the poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org.
from ee times: Congressional auditors are reportedly questioning the exploding scale of software development required to field the U.S. Army's Future Combat System. In a report in Thursday's (Jan. 24) edition, the Washington Post quoted officials with the congressional Government Accountability Office (GAO) as saying the Army underestimated the size of the software effort... The next largest DoD software development project is the Joint Strike Fighter, at about 23 million lines of code. According to the Post story, investigators said the software portion of the Future Combat System was "started prematurely" and that the Army and prime contractor Boeing Co. "didn't really understand the requirements."
from presstv: A plan drawn by Washington to divert Soviet Union weapons technology away from other countries has proven to be no more than a US scam. The US Department of Energy had set up a program after the fall of the USSR to keep newly impoverished Soviet scientists from immigrating to wealthy countries hostile to the United States.
from dhs.gov: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that it has begun collecting additional fingerprints from international visitors arriving at Boston Logan International Airport (Logan)... "Biometrics have revolutionized our ability to prevent dangerous people from entering the United States since 2004. Our upgrade to 10 fingerprint collection builds on our success, enabling us to focus more attention on stopping potential security risks," US VISIT Director Robert Mocny said.
from presstv: The US Department of Defense's wide-ranging 'warfighter enhancement program' is preparing grounds for the most lethal weapon ever. Pentagon's 'the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007' puts forward the idea of using different drugs to insulate combat soldiers from the stressful psychological element of killing. The move not only desensitizes them to the horrendous aspect of war, but also maximizes soldiers' lethality by bypassing their moral autonomy.
from global research: In 2003, then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld signed a document called the Information Operation Roadmap 
which outlined, among other things, the Pentagon's desire to dominate the entire electromagnetic spectrum. If you are unfamiliar with this document, more detail can be found in a previous article here... How exactly do you create a real time electronic battlespace picture? And where exactly is the battlespace? A very similar statement was made in the Project for a New American Century document 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' published in September of 2000 (more about this document here and here.)
from danger room: The Pentagon's highest-flying spy drone isn't able to "consistently" perform, even on a "limited schedule," according to a draft Defense Department report... That is, when they can fly. According to a draft report 
from ap: The Pentagon will send six new combat brigades to bases in Texas, Georgia, and Colorado in the coming years as part of an extensive plan to increase the size of the Army. As the Army moves to grow by 74,000 soldiers by 2010, officials mapped out decisions to add the combat brigades and eight support units around the country, as well an agreement to delay moving two brigades out of Germany until 2012-2013. The overall effort would cost $66.4 billion in 743 military construction projects through 2013.