Some news tomorrow. 06-22-2013 ScienceTechn

"The technology, having been inspired and engineered with a sense of urgency after 9/11, has obvious applications to conventional crime fighting," said Paul Browne, chief NYPD spokesman. "That is in the process of being expanded citywide, for what - after all - is our primary mission, which is to fight crime."

New York is among a handful of big U.S. cities that have been developing extensive surveillance networks in recent years using federal anti-terrorism funding. New York's network was initially modeled after London's so-called 'Ring of Steel,' the most extensive surveillance camera network anywhere.

There are no legal restrictions against using the surveillance network for traditional crime fighting, though much of the network has been built with Homeland Security grants. But the sheer scope and sophistication of the system worries people like Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"There is no outside monitoring of the use of this system at all...no protections now - none, zero," said Dunn, whose group filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the police of violating religious freedoms and constitutional guarantees of equality in its monitoring of Muslim communities.

The development comes amid recent disclosures about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance of phone and email traffic. With New York mayoral elections coming up in November, policing issues have become a point of contention among the candidates.

The NYPD is already facing litigation over its surveillance of Muslims and over so called stop-and-frisk tactics that critics say discriminate against minorities.

SURVEILLANCE DASHBOARD

Last summer, the department introduced what it calls its ‘Domain Awareness System,' or DAS, developed in partnership with Microsoft and funded by a combination of city funding and U.S. Homeland Security grants. To date the system has cost a total of $230 million, Browne said.

The system's customized software ties together much of the NYPD's wide-ranging resources - from surveillance cameras, license plate readers and radiation detectors to 911 calls, criminal records and other city databases - and displays the information on a user-friendly ‘dashboard.'

But at least two of the gadgets presented to Chen as gifts may not have been quite what they seemed: They included software intended to spy on the blind dissident, according to Jerome Cohen, an NYU professor who has been Chen's mentor, and another source familiar with the episode.

Like nearly everything surrounding Chen these days, the existence of the spyware is in dispute, and only adds to the public recriminations there have been between NYU and Chen's supporters over events surrounding the end of his fellowship.

Last weekend, Chen accused NYU of bowing to pressure from China by ending the fellowship, and his supporters have suggested that the university is wary of displeasing the Chinese authorities because of its plans for a campus in Shanghai. The allegations are vigorously denied by NYU, which says the fellowship was only ever planned to last a year.

At issue in the latest escalation in the argument are an iPad and at least one of the smartphones that were given to Chen days after he fled China and arrived in Manhattan. The devices were found by NYU technicians to have been loaded with software that made it possible to track the dissident's movements and communications, according to Cohen and the second source, who was not authorized to speak on the matter.

The episode suggests that from almost the day that he arrived at the university there was an uneasy atmosphere between Chen, his supporters, and NYU

Among the first visitors in May 2012 to the New York apartment Chen had moved into with his family after a dramatic escape from house arrest in China was Heidi Cai, the wife of activist Bob Fu. She brought an iPad and iPhone as gifts.

The devices were screened by NYU technicians within a few days and were found to have been loaded with hidden spying software, said Cohen, who arranged the fellowship for Chen at NYU Law School, helping defuse a diplomatic crisis between the United States and China after Chen took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. "These people supposedly were out to help him and they give him a kind of Trojan horse that would have enabled them to monitor his communications secretly," said Cohen.

The iPad was eventually cleaned up and returned to Chen at his request, the second source said.

Crowds converged on a mosque in the suburb of Nasr City, many waving the national flag, some carrying pictures of the bearded president, in what is intended to demonstrate the Islamists' strength of numbers ahead of the opposition rallies set for June 30, the first anniversary of Mursi's inauguration.

"Yes to respecting the will of the people!" read some banners.

"There are people seeking a coup against the lawful order," said demonstrator Gaber Nader, 22, his head protected from the burning sun by a green banner from Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, the movement whose organizational strength has won it successive elections since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

"Dr Mursi won in free and fair elections like in any state in the world," Nader said, shrugging off concerns among the less well organized opposition that the Brotherhood is aiming for a monopoly of power and to install Islamic rule and social order.

"Secular parties are eating the democracy God gave them."

Mursi's opponents say they have gathered about 15 million signatures - more than the 13 million votes that elected Mursi a year ago - on a petition calling on him to step down; they say new elections could end the paralyzing polarization of society, though no obvious leader has emerged to build consensus.

Mursi's opponents have attracted support from many Egyptians who are less politically engaged but exasperated by economic stagnation under the Islamists.

Supporters of the Brotherhood feel their electoral success is under siege from unelected institutions and vested interests rooted in the Mubarak era, when their party was banned. Reflecting this, some in Friday's crowd - mostly men, with a few heavily veiled women - chanted for "A purge of the judiciary!" and "A purge of the media!"

There was no trouble evident in Cairo, where people packed streets for hundreds of meters around the rallying point at the mosque; there were scuffles in Alexandria when Mursi supporters and opponents faced off briefly in Egypt's second city.

In Cairo, Brotherhood members armed with green staves said they were ready to protect demonstrators from "thugs".

Obama is scrambling to show he has credibility on the issue after coming under fire for the scope of surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, which was revealed in a series of disclosures by former government contractor Edward Snowden.

The president will hold talks with members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a five-person independent agency that has been largely dormant since 2008 and held its first full-fledged meeting on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed David Medine as its chairman last month.

The board's purpose is to review actions the government takes to protect national security, while balancing those steps with the need to protect privacy and civil liberties.

Obama, in an interview with PBS anchor Charlie Rose broadcast on Monday, strongly defended the surveillance program as necessary to protect against the possibility of attacks, but said he wanted to ensure Americans' retained their right to privacy.

His approval rating has dropped in some opinion polls, with the fallout over the surveillance program cited as a reason.

Privacy advocates have argued the surveillance activities infringe on Americans' civil liberties, and say the oversight is insufficient.

The Obama administration and high-profile lawmakers have defended the program as vital national security tools that are vigorously overseen by the administration, Congress and a special court.

'FURTHER QUESTIONS WARRANTED'

Medine told Reuters on Wednesday the board was aiming to hold a public event around July 9 to get legal insight from experts, academics and advocates.

"Based on what we've learned so far, the board believes further questions are warranted," said Medine, who previously was a partner at the law firm WilmerHale and served as an associate director at the Federal Trade Commission.

The White House announced steps to try to reveal more information about steps taken by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secretive court that oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign threats inside the United States.

At Obama's direction, his homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, asked the director of national intelligence on Thursday to review FISA court opinions and filings relevant to the NSA programs and determine what additional information the government could reveal about them.

The effort "builds on the administration's ongoing effort to declassify a significant amount of information regarding these programs," said a White House statement.

News that the U.S. National Security Agency under the Prism surveillance program secretly gathered user data from nine U.S. companies, including Google, to track people's movements and contacts makes the timing especially sensitive for Google.

France's data protection watchdog (CNIL) said Google had broken French law and gave it three months to change its privacy policies or risk a fine of up to 150,000 euros ($200,000).

Spain's Data Protection Agency (AEPD) told Google it would be fined between 40,000 euros and 300,000 for five violations of the law, that it had failed to be clear about what it did with data, may be processing a "disproportionate" amount and holding onto it for an "undetermined or unjustified" period of time.

The CNIL, which has been leading Europe's inquiry since Google launched its consolidated privacy policy in March 2012, said Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands would be taking similar action against the world's No. 1 search engine.

Google could face fines totaling several million euros.

"By the end of July, all the authorities within the (EU data protection) task force will have taken coercive action against Google," said CNIL President Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin.

Last year, Google consolidated its 60 privacy policies into one and started combining data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+. It gave users no means to opt out.

National data protection regulators in Europe began a joint inquiry as a result. They gave Google until February to propose changes but it did not make any. Google had several meetings with the watchdogs and argued that combining its policies made it easier for users to understand.

The CNIL's move is seen by legal experts and policymakers as a test of Europe's ability to influence the behavior of international Internet companies.

Britain is still considering whether its law has been broken and will write to Google soon with its findings, the CNIL said.

And Google is due to answer allegations on the issue in a German court hearing late next week, a spokesman for the country's data protection regulator said.

Google said it would continue to work with the authorities in France and elsewhere.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was extradited to Sweden last year from Cambodia to begin a one-year jail sentence after being convicted in 2009 of internet piracy. He was then charged by authorities as part of the separate hacking investigation.

"The hacking has been very extensive and technically advanced," the Nacka district court said in a statement. "The attacker has affected very sensitive systems."

He had denied the charges.

Prosecution documents say Warg, a 28-year-old Swede, managed to transfer 24,200 Danish crowns ($4,300) online, but also attempted, in several different transactions, to transfer a total of around 683,000 euros ($915,500).

The investigation was into data infringement involving outsourcing firm Logica.

Swedish authorities have said the hackers gained access to information on several people with protected identities.

In the 2009 trial, a court in Sweden - where The Pirate Bay was founded in 2003 - fined and sentenced to jail Warg and two co-founders then behind the site for breaching copyright in a case brought by firms including Sony Universal Music and EMI.

Swedish prosecutors in May launched a new attempt to close down Pirate Bay, which provides links to music and movie files stored on other users' computers.

"If you're like me, you want a Yahoo! ID that's short, sweet, and memorable like albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com," he wrote. The one-year period will officially begin July 15, when users can "claim" a dormant account name. They'll find out in mid-August if they got the account they wanted. It's clearly an effort by Yahoo, which has been working to redefine and rejuvenate itself under new CEO Marissa Mayer, to re-engage older users and reward active ones. But it has security experts nervous.

Security analyst Graham Cluley doesn't mince words. "In short: as an idea it sucks, and it shows Yahoo's lack of respect to customers who created accounts with them in years gone by," Cluley wrote Wednesday.

Cluley lists several scenarios where the plan could backfire. They include situations in which a user has another primary e-mail account, but has given their Yahoo address as a backup in case of security situations, lost passwords and the like.

He said the move appears to be "an underhanded way to get people to re-engage with the site" and that people who may not actively use their Yahoo mail, but use it to store old messages and other documents, could lose them without ever realizing it.

Mat Honan of CNN content partner Wired, himself the recent victim of a high-profile hack, called the move "a spectacularly bad idea." In the wake of such complaints, Yahoo released a followup statement saying it's sure the transition can be made without compromising security.

"We're committed and confident in our ability to do this in a way that's safe, secure and protects our users' data," the company said. The vast majority of inactive Yahoo IDs don't have a mailbox associated with them, the company said, and any personal data associated with the accounts will be deleted.

During a 30-day deactivation period, bounce-back e-mails will alert senders that the deactivated account no longer exists and Yahoo will unsubscribe those accounts from newsletters, commercial e-mail alerts and the like.