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schwit1 shares news from ZDNet's security blog: In more than three decades years, the FISA Court has only rejected 12 requests. A secret court that oversees the US government's surveillance requests accepted every warrant that was submitted last year, according to new figures.The Washington DC.-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court received 1,457 requests from the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to intercept phone calls and emails. In long-standing fashion, the court did not reject a single warrant, entirely or in part.

The FBI also issued 48,642 national security letters, a subpoena-like power that compels a company to turn over data on national security grounds without informing the subject of the letter. The memo said the majority of these demands sought data on foreigners, but almost one-in-five were requests for data on Americans.
It'll be interesting to see if the numbers go down any in 2016, since in November the court appointed five new lawyers to push back against government requests. Meanwhile, a new report shows an increase in the number of government requests to Facebook about their users, more than half of which contained a non-disclosure order prohibiting Facebook from notifying those users.

Reader Koreantoast writes: The New York Times posted an interesting thought piece (paywalled, this link could help) on the changing nature of manufacturing globally and the impact it has on modern politics and economic development. Although manufacturing productivity has jumped tremendously over the last several decades, the overall global pool of manufacturing jobs is shrinking as automation and new industrial technologies has increased the production and supply of manufactured goods with fewer people at a rate faster than global demand can absorb. The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them. How will industrialized nations manage the growing number of displaced, blue collar labor? Bigger impact globally is that the shrinking pool of manufacturing jobs globally is closing the traditional route of export-oriented manufacturing economy that many nations, particularly in East Asia, were able to use to lift their nations out of poverty. What happens to those nations that missed the boat?"The likelihood that we will get a manufacturing recovery is close to nil," Professor Stiglitz said. "We are more likely to have a smaller share of a shrinking pie."

Reader MojoKid writes: If you're a Windows 7 or Windows 8 user who hasn't yet upgraded to Windows 10, you've probably been bombarded at some point by Microsoft to upgrade, and not always at the most convenient times. Such was also the case with one meteorologist who saw a Windows 10 upgrade prompt show up during a very inopportune time -- right in the middle of a live forecast. Metinka Slater, a meteorologist with Des Moines CBS affiliate KCCI 8, was going about her business, giving viewers a rundown of the 12-hour rainfall totals in the area when a nagging Windows 10 upgrade screen popped up, just like it has for thousands of everyday Windows users. But rather than get flustered or give into Microsoft's demands, Slater laughed off the annoyance. "Ahh, Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10. What should I do?" Slater joked. "Don't you love when that pops up?"From the looks of it, either the concerned computer is running Windows 98, or is using classic theme.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Philadelphia man suspected of possessing child pornography has been in jail for seven months and counting after being found in contempt of a court order demanding that he decrypt two password-protected hard drives. The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has not been charged with any child porn crimes. Instead, he remains indefinitely imprisoned in Philadelphia's Federal Detention Center for refusing to unlock two drives encrypted with Apple's FileVault software in a case that once again highlights the extent to which the authorities are going to crack encrypted devices. The man is to remain jailed "until such time that he fully complies" with the decryption order. The government successfully cited a 1789 law known as the All Writs Act to compel (PDF) the suspect to decrypt two hard drives it believes contain child pornography. The All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Department asserted in its legal battle with Apple.

blottsie writes: The latest debate over encryption did not begin with a court order demanding Apple help the FBI unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone. The new "Crypto Wars," chronicled in a comprehensive timeline by Eric Geller of the Daily Dot, dates back to at least 2003, with the introduction of "Patriot Act II." The battle over privacy and personal security versus crime-fighting and national security has, however, become a mainstream debate in recent months. The timeline covers a wide-range of incidents where the U.S. and other allied governments have tried to restrict citizens' access to strong encryption. The timeline ends with the director of national intelligence blaming NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for advancing the spread of user-friendly, widely available strong encryption.

An anonymous reader writes: Utah Governor Gary Herbert said on his Facebook page: "Pornography is a public health crisis. The problem is rampant, yet it thrives in secrecy and silence." He emitted this thought on signing a resolution which says porn is "a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms." In addition, it "perpetuates a sexually toxic environment." The resolution doesn't just stop there. It goes on to say "due to advances in technology and the universal availability of the Internet, young children are exposed to what used to be referred to as hard core, but is now considered mainstream, pornography at an alarming rate." The resolution says pornography "equates violence toward women and children with sex and pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography." It requests "the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation." In the words of Gov. Gary Herbert, "Today's bills will start an open discussion." I couldn't agree more...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: A high ranking technology official with the FBI told members of Congress Tuesday that the agency is incapable of cracking locked phones and devices on its own, even with additional resources. Amy Hess, the agency's executive assistant director for science and technology told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that encrypted communications continue to pose a challenge to the American law enforcement, and to the safety of the American public. But when asked by lawmakers to provide a practical solution beyond the FBI's talking points, she said that the cooperation of technology companies would be necessary. According to the New York Times, "The FBI defended its hiring of a third-party company to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, telling some lawmakers on Tuesday that it needed to join with partners in the rarefied world of for-profit hackers as technology companies increasingly resist their demands for consumer information." They are stressing the importance of cooperation with tech companies and "third parties" to help fight terrorism, claiming they do not have the capabilities and resources available to crack encrypted devices. Congress is currently debating potential legislation on encryption.

An anonymous reader writes: Politicians in the Netherlands have proposed a law which could put a ban on sales of diesel and petrol cars by 2025. A majority of the lower house in the Dutch parliament approved a motion where all fossil fuel powered cars -- including hybrids -- would be banned. Yahoo News further reports, 'While it's still unclear whether the proposal will pass and become law, the ambitious plan would involve car manufacturers getting on board to produce enough electric vehicles to meet demand. The latest electric cars have shorter charging times and longer ranges, benefits that emission-free car evangelists hope will help make them appeal to users of traditional petrol and diesel cars." More details on this here.

An anonymous reader writes: Buzzfeed is reporting that "An online merchant has accused the Bernie Sanders campaign of 'trademark bullying'. after a Bernie 2016, Inc. attorney sent him a cease and desist letter regarding t-shirts, mugs, and sweatshirts depicting the candidate with historic communist leaders..." The t-shirt's designer tells Buzzfeed "He didn't seem to be the type of candidate, the type of guy, who would do something like this... I would think Bernie, or one of his staff members will step in and put an end to it. It appears to be pretty silly."
In January Ars Technica reported that lawyers for the Sanders campaign had demanded their logo be removed from pages on Wikipedia -- before later withdrawing that DMCA notice.

An anonymous reader writes: Today is Record Store Day, an event which includes exclusive vinyl releases distributed only through record stores. But besides complaints about scalpers hoarding the limited-edition releases, musicians and labels say the event monopolizes all of the available production capacity for pressing vinyl records, creating delays as long as six months and inflating vinyl record prices as high as $30. "The bottleneck persists even though plants work around the clock for months to accommodate the surge in orders leading up to Record Store Day," writes the New Yorker, noting that the demand for vinyl records has now increased six-fold over the last eight years.

Part of the problem appears to be big labels. (One insisted on printing 2,100 copies of their 1974 novelty hit "Kung Fu Fighting" for the independent record store event, the New Yorker notes, "meaning that an up-and-coming band's new album could, in theory, be delayed.") Meanwhile, with current techniques, one production plant still has to scrap up to 20% of the records it presses due to quality issues -- although in the last four months, two companies have introduced new faster technologies for pressing vinyl records.
This year's records include a Dr. Who track called "Genesis of the Daleks" and a track from the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" soundtrack on a vinyl picture disc, as well as releases from Anthrax, David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, the Flaming Lips, and even Devo members Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale. Metallica -- this year's "ambassador" for the event -- plans to stream a live performance at Rasputin Records in Berkeley California.)

WheezyJoe writes: A court in Nebraska has officially ruled that Pastafarianism is not a real religion, and therefore a prison inmate with "several tattoos proclaiming his faith" will not get $5 million or privileges to order and wear religious clothing and pendants, nor meet for weekly worship services and classes and receive communion. The Federal judge ruled that The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a "real" religion eligible for protection under the First Amendment...

In ruling against the inmate and the church of Pastafarianism, the judge wrote "there must be a line beyond which a practice is not 'religious' simply because a plaintiff labels it as such... A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Bokononism or the Church of All Worlds [citing Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land]. The Flying Spaghetti Monster Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement," and thus not a "real" religion.

An anonymous reader writes: The bill released Thursday by Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein to force U.S. companies to build backdoors into their encryption systems has been further dissected by experts. In less than 24 hours after the Court Orders Act of 2016 draft was released, 43,000 signatures have been added to a petition calling for the bill to be withdrawn. Bruce Schneier, the writer of the books on modern cryptography, said the bill would make most of what the NSA does illegal, unless no such agency is willing to backdoor its own encrypted communications. "This is the most braindead piece of legislation I've ever seen," Schneier told The Register. "The person who wrote this either has no idea how technology works or just doesn't care." Schneier says cryptographic code will be affected by this legislation, as well as "lossy compression algorithms" that are used to reduce the size of images for sending through email, which won't work in reverse and add back the data removed. Files that can't be decrypted on demand to their original state, and files that can't be decompressed back to their exact originals, all look the same to this draft now. He said even deleted data could be covered in this legislation.

An anonymous reader writes: Peabody Energy Corp filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after a sharp drop in coal prices left it unable to service debt of $10.1 billion, much of it incurred for an expansion into Australia. As demand for metallurgical coal fell, particularly in China, Peabody's financial woes intensified. The company took a $700 million write-down on its Australian metallurgical coal assets last year. At home, the U.S. shale boom of the past few years made natural gas competitive with thermal coal, and the Obama administration's environmental regulations raised operational costs. Mr. Peabody's coal train might not be hauling away any more of paradise. Peabody, the world's biggest private-sector coal producer, said it expected its mines to continue to operate as usual and said its Australian assets were excluded from the bankruptcy. "This process enables us to strengthen liquidity and reduce debt, build upon the significant operational achievements we've made in recent years and lay the foundation for long-term stability and success in the future," Peabody Chief Executive Officer Glenn Kellow said in a statement.

An anonymous reader shares a report on Bloomberg: Apple Inc.'s fight over privacy with the U.S. isn't over yet, even after the government dropped a demand for the company's help in accessing a California shooter's iPhone because someone else found a way to crack it. The U.S. said it'll keep fighting to get the company's help in getting data off a phone in Brooklyn, New York, that belonged to a drug dealer because Apple provided assistance in accessing such devices earlier. In a court filing Friday, the government said it's going ahead with an appeal of a judge's order denying its request for Apple's help. The battle between the world's most valuable tech company and the U.S. over encryption and data privacy has sparked a national debate, with dozens of companies and organizations siding with Apple, while law enforcement has generally taken the government's side.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: "Messengers are the new browsers and bots are the new websites," Kik's Mike Roberts told The Next Web. The messaging app that's big with America's youth has launched a bot store and developer platform to support it. The Kik Bot Shop offers mini-apps that you can add to your account and either chat to directly or use in your chats with others. For example, at launch, there's a bot that inserts relevant Vine videos into your chats at your request, similar to Giphy's insanely popular Slack integration, and if you do prefer GIFs, Riffsy (which also powers Twitter's GIFs) has a bot for Kik. A Weather Channel bot can tell you the forecast on demand or send you a regular update, and if you're looking for beauty tips, Sephora's bot has you covered. There are 18 bots in the store at launch, but Kik is keen for developers to build more.

An anonymous reader writes: After receiving more than 198,000 Model 3 preorders in the first 24 hours, Tesla may need more cash if it hopes to deliver their new electric vehicle to customers on time, analysts said. Elon Musk plans to launch the Model 3 in late 2017, eventually boosting the company's annual production tenfold to 500,000 by 2020. Many analysts believe some customers making early reservations may not receive their vehicle until 2019 or 2020. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, predicted Tesla's sales will hit under 250,000 in 2020. Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, believes the surge of Model 3 reservations could reach 300,000 by the end of June. Some analysts expect the first cars will sell for an average of $50,000-$60,000, but Tesla prices its current models in several "tiers," depending on content and optional features. RBC analyst Joseph Spak said strong initial orders for the Model 3 could help Tesla achieve positive free cash flow. In February, the company said it expected to be cash-flow positive in March. Spak said Tesla may not be able to fulfill many of the early orders before 2019: "Demand was never really our concern, it is more about execution and getting production up to meet demand."

An anonymous reader writes: From Q1 of 2012 to Q1 of 2016, Netflix has added an incredible 111 original series and films. The numbers translate to an average quarterly growth rate of 34.22% and an average annual growth rate of 185.41%. And there is reason to believe that future growth rates could be even higher -- with competition coming from all sides, Netflix is likely to keep pushing more and more cash into original content. Those wondering why Netflix has grown increasingly interested in owning the shows it airs, you have to realize that not long ago the streaming company was struggling to snap any good TV show from cable channels. The New York Times' profile of House of Cards' Beau Willimon, from 2014, sheds more light into this : Around three years ago, Netflix realized it had a problem: It was paying large sums to license other people's content -- TV shows and movies produced by other companies -- in order to then show them to you, the Netflix subscriber, at home. This initially proved successful, but there were two troubling aspects to this model: 1) It left Netflix very vulnerable to competition, since the shows and movies it licensed could, theoretically, be licensed by anyone willing to outbid them, and 2) the most popular TV shows, episodic dramas like "CSI" and sitcoms like "The Big Bang Theory," were already being sold for huge deals into syndication at basic cable channels like TBS and USA. What was left to Netflix were the kind of serialized shows that don't typically play well in syndication, like "Lost" and "Breaking Bad," which have complicated story arcs that compel a viewer to watch all the episodes in order. Traditionally, while these kinds of serialized shows could be big hits in their initial broadcast runs, they proved tough sells to aftermarkets, precisely because of the demands they placed on the audience.

coondoggie quotes a report from Network World: The fraud and scam war rages. This week the Federal Courts warned of swindles involving people posing as federal court officials and U.S. Marshals targeting citizens, threatening them with arrest unless they pay some fake fine for failing to show up for jury duty. "This year's scams are more aggressive and sophisticated than we've seen in years past," says Melissa Muir, Director of Administrative Services for the U.S. District Court of Western Washington in a statement. "Scammers are setting up call centers, establishing call-back protocols and using specific names and designated court hearing times." The bottom line: A federal court will never threaten an individual or demand the immediate payment -- either over the telephone or money wire service -- for fines or for not responding to a jury summons, the court stated.

Like many of you, I use IFTTT. It's one of the handiest tools on the internet to get your work done. Want a text alert for weather? Want a notification on your Android smartphone whenever someone you follow publishes a blog post? IFTTT can do all sorts of such things. It is able to do so because it works with different companies and utilizes APIs of their services. Many of these companies are happy to have IFTTT trying to enhance the experience of their customers. Many don't necessarily want -- or can allow -- IFTTT to do that. Pinboard, a social bookmarking website, falls in the latter category. Maciej Ceglowski, CEO of Pinboard in a blog post explained why that is the case: Imagine if your sewer pipe started demanding that you make major changes in your diet. Now imagine that it got a lawyer and started asking you to sign things. You would feel surprised. This is the position I find myself in today with IFTTT, a form of Internet plumbing that has been connecting peaceably to my backend for the past five years, but which has recently started sending scary emails. [...] Because many of you rely on IFTTT, and because [their request] makes it sound like I'm the asshole, I feel I should explain myself. In a nutshell: 1. IFTTT wants me to do their job for them for free. 2. They have really squirrely terms of service. In the blog post, Ceglowski further explains his concerns with IFTTT. He says IFTTT wants ownership of all right, title, and interest. "Pinboard is in some ways already a direct competitor to IFTTT. The site offers built-in Twitter integration, analogous to IFTTT's twitter-Pinboard recipe. I don't know what rights I would be assigning here, but this is not the way I want to find out." You should read the blog post, it's very insightful and sheds light on things that many of us might not have considered otherwise. Jason Snell has offered his take on this as well, he writes: If IFTTT sticks with this philosophy, it will rapidly become a lot less useful and interesting as a service.

An anonymous reader cites an article on The Register: Six people have been charged with exploiting a bug in lottery terminals to print off winning tickets on demand. Connecticut prosecutors say the group conspired to manipulate automated ticket dispensers to run off '5 Card Cash' tickets that granted on-the-spot payouts in the US state. According to the Hartford Courant, a group of shop owners and employees set up the machines to process a flood of tickets at once, which caused a temporary display freeze. This allowed operators to see which of the tickets about to be dispensed would be winning ones, cancel the duff ones, and print the good ones, it's alleged. The winning tickets would be cashed and billed to the state lottery.