From Fastcompany.com comes this introduction to the zoomable paper map. Each quarter of the map can be unfolded, revealing zoomed-in detail.

A new approach to China

1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident—albeit a significant one—was something quite different… we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves…

We have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered—combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web—have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Fresh from the WSJ this morning.It seems Iraqi insurgents are beginning to steal signals from US drones. Evidence backing John Robb’s Global Guerillas theory seems to mount daily. Here’s the article

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber—available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet—to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

Read the rest.

Comment: This is the other side of technology that we haven’t heard much about. While certainly it is not a surprise to many experts, it is an area that seems largely undiscussed in public. I would hope the military is already planning for contingencies that include the enemy taking control of unmanned land, sea and air vehicles. But the article continuously stating that things are ok, and no damage was done makes this author rather suspicious. One has to wonder whether this is also occuring in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ‘honeymoon phase’ of unmanned vehicles is slowlycoming to an end.

Via @Durf. See the whole set.

(Via Threatswatch)

In positive news on the homeland security front, Texas is scanning inmates fingerprints now and forwarding them on to DHS, who can then check the citizenship status of inmates. Thus, deporting violent illegals will become much easier. The article notes as many as 450,000 illegals may be in prisons nationwide.

While I applaud this step as both necessary and long overdue, I do want to sound a note of caution. We’ve gone down this road before and it has come back to bite us. A Foreign Affairs article from several years ago which dicussed the proliferation of gangs throughout Central America, gangs that were founded in the United States. With many gang members being children of illegals and themselves not being citizens, they were deported to home countries they had never visited. Upon arrival, they fell back on the same ‘survival’ method they used in the US, gangs.

Over time, these gangs became international, establishing branches south of the border and with the ease of acquiring weapons, explosives and guns from countries fresh out of civil wars, lucrative and dangerous smuggling networks and routes quickly developed. Granted, deporting illegals was the right decision. However, little thought was given to the local, regional and international consequences of such action. Let’s not make the same mistake again. It will be important to develop better law enforcement relationships between the US and central and south American countries and joint plans for handling what is already and will continue to be a regular activity. Yet, some countries are not able to adequately police themselves in the first place. In these cases, the US should quietly encourage and turn a blind eye to the unofficial ‘3 strikes and your out’ policy in Honduras (which I’ve been told about from people who visit regularly) whereby repeat offenders are ‘disappeared’ for good.

Aceface kindly pointed me to this, a scanned pdf of the Japanese-language “Flying Object Information” form, filled out by hand by a Japan bureaucrat. It contains the basic information on the missile that flew over Japan on Sunday, noting where it was spotted (to the west of Akita prefecture) and when and where it left Japan’s territorial sphere. Notice also the painfully low resolution of the scan (200dpi?), such that the font is jagged, and you can see random black dots where the scan was imperfect.

The Japanese government has been doing its best to show the public that it is being diligent and fully in-control of the North Korea missile situation. The day of the launch, news clips showed fresh young agency bureaucrats in the Self Defense Force and other affiliated government agencies in rural Akita and Iwate prefecture literally sprinting between rooms when the launch was announced. The public disclosure of the pdf linked above is yet another part of looking busy. They’re doing their absolute best to look like they control the situation when they are almost entirely helpful. Tobias has more on this here and here.

I give them an “A” for effort in looking busy. But the stubborn refusal of the Japanese to use modern technology in the most basic of internal management systems is just revolting. Communications in every modern western organization today are handled electronically—nothing needs to be filled out by hand, and there aren’t “runners” in the halls of the Pentagon and Whitehouse to implement and communicate important information. (In the rare situation that data must be taken by hand, it is punched into a database or system through data entry, and raw handwritten documents that aren’t fit for public scrutiny aren’t voluntarily disclosed to the world). Japan has the best hi-tech gadgets in the world, but so much of the busy work of government (and industry) is still handled by this type of paper scrawl, and throwing raw manpower at problems instead of trying to make systems of operation and management efficient or streamlined. All of this means that government in Japan circa 2009 is backwards. This simply must change.

In other news related to the DPRK missile launch, a majority of Americans would support a military response to the missile launch, 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Gingrich says he would have destroyed the missile before it was launched, and in case you didn’t hear it, despite all the chest-thumping from Pyongyang, the launch was actually a failure.

Comments are closed. Please comment at Mutantfrog, where this post also appears, and where I occasionally write posts on topics relating to Japan.

With a new KAC rail mount you can use your iPod touch to relieve boredom during that long wait before you can tag your HPT. You can also calculate ballistic trajectories with their Bulletflight app. Details at The Firearm Blog.

Last week’s Economist featured three articles detailing how domestic politics has held America back in the space race. The punditocracy maintains that we may be headed into a Cold War 2, and the issue for those interested in science is whether or not the US will champion scientific research and science education as it did during the first cold war. The scientific debate in US politics has fallen victim to the culture wars. Over the past 15 years we have seen a decline of the scientific American. It has been predicted that by 2010, 90% of PhDs in the physical sciences and engineering will be Asians.

The current US election is a reflection of the lack of appreciation for science. Candidates have been using the latest communications technologies to generate cash, organize volunteers and get the vote out. However, no candidate wants to talk about the science enabling their campaigns — not to mention the science that will improve the economy, solve the energy crisis, and save the environment.

ScienceDebate 2008 never happened. It was cancelled. Meanwhile, both candidates took the time to pander to Pastor Rick at SaddleBack, a worrying — if continuing — trend of electoral politics in the US. The last eight years weren’t necessarily friendly to science and science education, but now we find that McCain’s runningmate Sarah Palin wants creationism taught in schools.

Is science too difficult a topic? To obscure to debate? Or is it taken for granted? Perhaps everyone knows that despite the electioneering, science will always be there to fall back on. Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be much more productive to discuss science upfront and develop solid policies rather than simply praying and failing, only to have to start all over again?

*(Sept 1) UPDATE:* Obama just answered the policy questionnaire from ScienceDebate 2008. More at Slashdot. Mr Obama, if you are reading ComingAnarchy, may I suggest you drop your protectionist economic policies? Cheers – YH

Rinderpest, an animal disease that plagued livestock and their human keepers across Eurasia and Africa for millennia, may be on the verge of joining smallpox as the only viral diseases to have been eradicated in human history.

The virus never became established in the western hemisphere. In the 1920s, Europe eradicated it by controlling animal movements and slaughtering infected animals. Worldwide control became a priority of the fledgling United Nations’ agricultural efforts in 1945. A vaccine grown in goats became available in the 1950s. And in the 1960s, a live attenuated vaccine became widely used in rinderpest-eradication efforts. A global campaign established in the early 1990s did much to control the spread of the virus and “reinfection” between Arabia and India through livestock export.

Sri Lanka and Iran reported their last outbreaks in 1994, India in 1995, Iraq in 1996, Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1997, and Pakistan in 2000. In Africa, the virus was last detected in 2001 in wild buffaloes in Meru National Park in Kenya, which lies on the edge of the Somali ecosystem. This may be the last remaining reservoir of the virus. And pending confirmation it may finally be eradicated.

One small step for… well, certainly one giant leap in shrinking the gap.

A buddy notified me that the Technology in Wartime conference has released online video for each of its panels. Here is the lineup:

• Introduction and Bruce Schneier Keynote on “Dual Use Technologies”
• Panel I: When Robots Commit War Crimes: Autonomous Weapons and Human Responsibility
• Panel II: Surveillance, Secret Police, and Software: Defending Digital Liberties and Human Rights in a Time of War
• Panel III: Cyberterrorism: Myths and Facts
• Panel IV: “Smart” Soldiers in Battle
• Panel V: What Would a Socially-Responsible Computer Scientist Do?

I know what I’m going to be doing this week.