Newspapers Online.. 07-08-2013 | ScienceTech

In a way, it doesn't matter which conclusion one draws. The fact is that, as I argued two weeks ago, the metadata is what the spooks want for the simple reason that it's machine-readable and therefore searchable. It's what makes comprehensive internet-scale surveillance possible.

Why hasn't there been greater public outrage about the cynicism of the "just metadata" mantra?

One explanation is that most people imagine that metadata isn't really very revealing and so they're not unduly bothered by what NSA and its overseas franchises are doing. If that is indeed what they believe, then my humble suggestion is that they think again.

We already know how detailed an account of an individual's daily life can be constructed from metadata extracted from a mobile phone. What people may not realise is how informative the metadata extracted from their email logs can be.

In an attempt to illustrate this, MIT researcher Ethan Zuckerman published an extraordinary blog post last Wednesday. Entitled "Me and my metadata", it explains what happened when two of his students wrote a program to analyse his Gmail account and create from the metadata therein a visualisation of his social network (and of his private life), which he then publishes and discusses in detail. En passant, it's worth saying that this is a remarkably public-spirited thing to do; not many researchers would have Zuckerman's courage.

"The largest node in the graph, the person I exchange the most email with, is my wife, Rachel," he writes. "I find this reassuring, but [the researchers] have told me that people's romantic partners are rarely their largest node.

The craft set off at 04:56 (08:56 GMT) on Saturday from Washington DC, and landed about 23:15 (03:45 GMT Sunday).

A Statue of Liberty fly-pass had to be cancelled, due to a 2.5metre (8ft) tear in the fabric of the left wing.

The Across America transcontinental bid began in San Francisco in early May - at a top speed of 70km/h (45mph).

It included stopovers in Phoenix, Arizona, Dallas, Texas, and St Louis, Missouri.

Neither the pilot nor the plane appeared to be in any danger because of the wing tear, officials said.

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA has the same wingspan as an Airbus A340 but at a weight of just 1.6 tonnes. By comparison, a fully laden A340 weighs about 370 tonnes.

The plane's wing and stabiliser are covered with nearly 12,000 solar cells, which drive its four propellers and charge the plane's 400kg of lithium-ion batteries for night-time flying.

The project has been billed as the first time that a solar-powered plane capable of flying day and night has attempted a journey across the US.

Andre Borschberg and his fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard have been alternating flying duties on the single-seat craft, with each leg of the trip designed to be under 24 hours in length. The prior leg was complicated by high winds and air traffic, so it was re-routed via Cincinnati at the last minute in order to stay under this limit.

"It was difficult to find all these 'weather windows' in the States - especially this last one," Mr Borschberg told BBC News prior to the flight.

"We had so much to organise to make it feasible - to integrate an experimental airplane like Solar Impulse in the busiest air traffic in the world, flying from Washington to Kennedy (airport) was extremely hard."

The Across America project is the last outing for the HB-SIA prototype craft.

Mr Piccard's and Mr Borschberg's intention is to finish a larger, two-seat plane, the HB-SIB, and fly it around the world in the spring of 2015.

That, Mr Borschberg said, would be "many times more complex than what we did here in the US".

"Working in one country with one language makes it of course easier than working internationally on different continents with all the logistics," he said. "The unpredictable side of the project requires a lot of preparation."

The HB-SIA craft carried out the first inter-continental flight in 2012 and holds the world record for the longest manned solar-powered flight at 26 hours.

That was the incendiary view being championed by an angel investor called Sveinn Valfells last week, as investors, computer programmers and users of the online currency gathered at Canary Wharf to attend the Bitcoin London conference. Despite the unorthodoxy of Valfells' points, he was actually making his argument from a position of some kind of strength in that he is a) Icelandic, and b) comes from a family with a history of running unofficial currencies.

"My grandfather co-founded a construction company in 1947 called Steypustodin – "the ready-mix factory" – and my father and his cousins were running the company in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of double-digit, and then triple-digit, inflation," he said. "In Iceland, people liked to build their own houses at the time, but they couldn't put the money they were saving to build their homes into the bank, because it disappeared. Somebody had the idea to buy certificates in building materials in advance, and those certificates were denominated in cubic metres of concrete.

"It became very popular on payday, and our company would issue the certificates. One day the company got a call from the inland revenue asking if we had issued these vouchers. We confirmed it, but asked why they wanted to know. The official said somebody was trying to use the vouchers to pay his taxes."

That the Icelandic revenue eventually accepted the vouchers shows, Valfells argued, that there are moments in history when people are keen to try out innovative alternative currencies.

This fascinating view was aired during a week in which the Bitcoin currency started to attract more mainstream publicity, with support from a pair of high- profile backers.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the former Olympic rowing twins who famously alleged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their website idea, revealed plans to float an investment fund based on the digital currency. Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust would, they said, initially sell $20m of shares, with each share worth a fraction of a Bitcoin. The shares are aimed at investors looking for a "cost-effective and convenient means to gain exposure to Bitcoins", according to a filing with US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Murray, who was beaten in last year's final by Roger Federer, triumphed 6-4 7-5 6-4 against six-time grand slam winner Djokovic. The World No.2 won Olympic gold on Centre Court last year before going on to win the 2012 U.S. Open.

Murray, 26, is the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. Serving for the match at 5-4 in a dramatic third set, Murray wasted three match points before being forced to stave off three break points. But the home favorite finally, at the fourth time of asking, secured the point to ensure his place in Wimbledon history.

"It feels slightly different to last year," Murray told fans on Centre Court. "Last year was one of the toughest moments of my career, so to manage to win the tournament today.

"It was an unbelievably tough match, so many long games. "My head was everywhere in that last game, he was hitting some unbelievable shots and I think that is why at the end of the match I almost didn't know what had happened.

The newspaper did not say how much traffic was monitored by NSA computers and intelligence officials. But the Globo article pointed out that in the Americas, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted.

Brazil was a priority nation for the NSA communications surveillance alongside China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, Globo said.

In the 10-year period, the NSA captured 2.3 billion phone calls and messages in the United States and then used computers to analyze them for signs of suspicious activity, the paper said. In the United States, the NSA used legal but secret warrants to compel communications companies to turn over information about calls and emails for analysis.

Some access to Brazilian communications was obtained through American companies that were partners with Brazilian telecommunications companies, the paper reported, without naming the companies.

The Globo article was written by Glenn Greenwald, Roberto Kaz and José Casado. Greenwald, who works for Britain's Guardian newspaper and lives in Rio de Janeiro, was the journalist who first revealed classified documents provided by Snowden, outlining the extent of U.S. communications monitoring activity at home and abroad.

After providing the information to Greenwald, Snowden fled the United States for Hong Kong and was most recently seen in the transit area of the Moscow airport.

"They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states," German magazine Der Spiegel quotes him as saying in an interview published on Sunday that was carried out before he fled to Hong Kong in May and divulged details of extensive secret U.S. surveillance.

"Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide," he said.

His comments about cooperation with governments overseas, which he said were led by the NSA's Foreign Affairs Directorate, appear to contradict the German government's show of surprise at the scale of the U.S. electronic snooping.

Germany has demanded explanations for Snowden's allegations of large-scale spying by the NSA, and by Britain via a programme codenamed 'Tempora', on their allies including Germany and other European Union states, as well as EU institutions and embassies.

Chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out during President Barack Obama's recent visit that Germany had avoided terrorist attacks thanks to information from allies. But she says there must be limits to the intrusion on privacy and wants this discussed next week in parallel with the start of EU-U.S. free trade talks.

Berlin has alluded repeatedly to "Cold War" tactics - Merkel used the term again on Saturday at a political rally - and has said spying on friends is unacceptable. Her spokesman has said a transatlantic trade deal requires a level of "mutual trust".

ELECTION ISSUE

The domestic intelligence chief has said he knew nothing of such widespread surveillance by the NSA. But German opposition parties - with an eye on September's federal election - insist that somebody in Merkel's office, where the German intelligence agencies are coordinated, must have known what was going on.

The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Der Spiegel report, which follows a report last week in French daily Le Monde saying France also had an extensive surveillance programme.

Der Spiegel has reported that on an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets, rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days.

Major-General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, who commands Afghan forces in seven crucial southeast provinces, said insurgent numbers were up around 15 percent on last year's summer fighting months, with an estimated 5,000 insurgents now in his area.

Many were Pakistanis and Chechens, Yaftali said, reinforcing recent assessments by Afghan army chief of staff General Sher Mohammad Karimi that the insurgency's backers in Pakistan had shut Islamic schools to send more fighters across the border.

"They closed them on purpose, to push them to Afghanistan to disrupt security," said Yaftali in a frank assessment likely to raise hackles in Pakistan. "There are 3,500 madrassas in Pakistan and if everyone send five people, well, you can imagine," he said.

Pakistan, which supported the 1996-2001 Taliban government in Afghanistan, is seen as crucial to U.S. and Afghan efforts to promote peace in Afghanistan, a task that is gaining urgency as NATO-led combat troops continue to leave the country.

Karimi, in comments rejected by Islamabad, said in a recent interview that the influential Pakistan military could end the 12-year-old Afghan war if it chose to "in weeks", despite facing a Taliban insurgency of its own.

Yaftali said recent security operations in the east by four Afghan brigades had greatly improved security with only minimal assistance from NATO coalition allies. Major roads were cleared and more than 650 insurgents killed over three months.

While local people in Paktia province say the Taliban-allied Haqqani network still influences at least five of 14 districts, Yaftali said around 150,000 girls attending school in his command were proof the insurgency was on the back foot and its leaders were now throwing everything possible into the fight.

As evidence, Afghan commanders organized a media conference with a Pakistani insurgent captured after being shot in the leg and who was handcuffed to a bed as he recovered at the military's Paktia Regional National Hospital.

"The people told us there are infidels and to go and fight against them. That's why I came," said the fighter, who gave his age as around 22 and his name as "Hezbollah", after the Lebanon-based Islamic militant group and political bloc.

Demonstrators at the Republican Guard barracks, where three people were killed on Friday, shouted "Mursi, Mursi, God is greatest!" and "Peaceful, peaceful!" as soldiers and policemen looked on from behind barbed wire.

"We will not leave until Mursi returns. Otherwise we'll die as martyrs," said 55-year-old Hanim Ahmad Ali Al-Sawi, wearing a veil over her face in the searing midday sun. "This was a coup against democracy."

Mursi was toppled on Wednesday in a takeover the military denied was a coup. The army said it stepped in to enforce the will of millions of Egyptians who rallied on June 30 demanding his resignation.

But while Mursi's ouster was met with scenes of jubilation, it angered Islamists who held protests on Friday in which more than 30 people were killed and 1,400 wounded.

The violence across the Arab world's most populous state saw rival factions fighting street battles in central Cairo and many others cities and towns, and underlined the pressing need for a swift and inclusive political solution.

Egypt's allies in the West, including main aid donors the United States and the European Union, and in Israel, with which Egypt has had a U.S.-backed peace treaty since 1979, have looked on with increasing alarm.

POLITICAL IMPASSE

The transitional authorities had been set to appoint liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei, a favorite of young anti-Mursi protest leaders, before his candidacy was thrown into doubt when a hardline Islamist party objected.

The abrupt U-turn due to opposition from the Nour Party, Egypt's second Islamist force after the Brotherhood, highlighted the challenge the military faces in finding consensus among liberals and conservatives on who should run the country and what direction they should lead it in.

"We extend our hand to everyone," a presidential spokesman told reporters late on Saturday. "The Muslim Brotherhood has plenty of opportunities to run for all elections including the coming presidential elections or the ones to follow."

Minutes after he spoke, state media reported that the public prosecutor had ordered four top Brotherhood leaders arrested this week to be detained for a further 15 days on accusations of inciting violence against protesters.

Sales of BlackBerry's make-or-break new line of smartphones in the quarter ended June 1 came in well below analysts' expectations and offered little evidence that the company can quickly win back market share from Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone, Samsung's (005930.KS) Galaxy devices, and other phones powered by Google Inc's (GOOG.O) Android operating system.

"The results were a quasi death knell for BlackBerry," said John Goldsmith, the deputy head of equities at Montrusco Bolton, which owns more than 1.5 million BlackBerry shares. "The share move last week was very violent. I think you are going to get people standing up and making their voices heard at the AGM."

BlackBerry has forecast another operating loss for the current quarter, but Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said the company is on the right track and just needs more time.

"This is a year of investment. We have managed our cash carefully and prudently, and we now have the funds to invest, so this is the 'create the future' year," Heins told Reuters.

Some investors say BlackBerry must now look at all its options, from a sale of the whole company to a sale of parts. Its valuable patent portfolio and high-margin services business could draw interest from technology companies, according to bankers and investors.

Interest from private equity is seen to be weak, however, and some investors said they fear that BlackBerry will only lose more value if it keeps posting losses, burning through cash and bleeding subscribers.

"I think the pieces were worth more than the whole a year or two ago, but that's becoming less of a convincing argument and I am not sure it is true," said one fund manager, whose firm is one of BlackBerry's top 20 shareholders. The manager declined to be identified, citing to his firm's policy.

Ottawa reviews any big takeover of a Canadian company for competitive and national security reasons. Government officials have often said they want BlackBerry to succeed as a Canadian company, but concede they do not know how things will play out.

Given the uncertainty about its turnaround prospects, a foreign bid for BlackBerry could be palatable to Canadian regulators, some shareholders say.

PROSPECTS THINNING

Heins said BlackBerry is determined to stick to its strategy, and will unveil more devices that run on its new BlackBerry 10 operating system over the next eight months.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which advises its mainly rich nation members on economic and tax policies, has been charged by the G20 group of countries with formulating measures to stop big companies shifting profits into tax havens.

Corporate tax avoidance has become a hot political issue following public outrage over revelations in the past year that companies such as Apple and Google had used structures U.S. and European politicians said were designed to minimize the amount of taxes paid.

The OECD is now due to present an "action plan" highlighting broad areas where changes will be discussed to a G20 meeting later in July.

A preliminary draft of the plan, dated May 27, seen by Reuters, shows the organization has already identified a number of specific profit shifting schemes.

"Domestic and international tax rules should be modified in order to more closely align the allocation of income with the economic activity that generates that income," the draft said, echoing comments from politicians in the United States and Europe in the past year.

Business lobby groups have questioned whether companies do engage in activities to shift profits to units in tax havens and whether there is a need for rule changes.

But as governments struggle with large deficits following the financial crisis, lawmakers have said enough is enough.

The draft plan aims for OECD members and non-OECD G20 members to agree on specific changes to international tax rules in one to two years -- fast by the standards of international tax diplomacy.

Among the areas the draft said the OECD would seek to address are situations where companies avoid creating a taxable residence in a market where they have major activities.

British lawmakers have accused Google of using certain arrangements to avoid creating a tax residence in the UK. [ID:nL5N0EO2HF]

Its low tax bill is a result of channeling revenues through Ireland, from where most revenue is sent to Bermuda, with next to taxes being paid anywhere in the chain.

The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved a second miracle attributed to John Paul, a Pole who was elected in 1978 as the first non-Italian pope in 450 years and died in 2005. His progression to sainthood is the fastest in modern times.

The Vatican also said Pope John XXIII, who reigned from 1958 to 1963 and called the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council - which enacted sweeping reforms to modernize the Church - would be made a saint even though he has only been credited with one miracle since his death.

The canonization ceremonies, which are likely to bring hundreds of thousands to people to Rome, are expected this year.

John Paul had already been credited with asking God to cure a French nun of Parkinson's disease, the same malady he had, before he was beatified in 2011.

Two confirmed miracles are usually required under Vatican rules for the declaration of a saint.

The second miracle attributed to his intercession is the inexplicable curing of a Costa Rican woman who prayed to him for help with her medical condition on the day of his beatification.

In the case of Pope John XXIII, who was known as the "good pope", Francis waived the customary rules requiring a second miracle after beatification, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. John XXIII was beatified in 2000.

Francis, who has tried to instill a spirit of simplicity and reform in the Church since his election in March, is known to have great admiration for the reforming Pope John, who was born of peasant stock in northern Italy.

John Paul went down in history as the "globe-trotting pope," visiting every inhabited continent in more than 100 trips outside Italy.

LAST DAYS WATCHED BY WORLD

His struggle with ill health was watched by millions around the world on television towards the end of his life.

He was also credited with being instrumental in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 because of his steadfast defense of the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland.

After martial law was declared in Poland in 1981, he is believed to have told then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that if Russia invaded Poland, he would return home.

John Paul was nearly killed by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot him in St Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. Two trials failed to prove Italian magistrates' accusations that the Bulgarian secret services had carried out the plot with Agca on behalf of the Soviet Union.