Ashley Gold & Paul Blake
Weakening Encrypted Communications Would Do Little to Stop Terrorist Attacks, Experts Say
By Annie Sneed
In the aftermath of last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, U.S. government officials have reignited the debate over encryption and government surveillance. They argue that encryption is a huge problem in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and that tech companies should create “backdoor” access to encrypted information for the government—something that big tech companies including Apple, Google and Facebook fiercely oppose. Yet despite speculation, we still do not know whether encryption played any role in the Paris attacks—and even if it did, security analysts say, granting the government access to encrypted data will not make it much easier to track terrorists.
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But many security analysts doubt this reasoning. Yes, encryption makes investigations more difficult for intelligence agencies, they say. But the problem with giving the government backdoor access to a major platform like WhatsApp is that bad actors will just use other platforms instead. “Encryption is just math, and there are dozens of open-source encryption packages. There’s no way you could stop it,” says Matthew Green, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, “Law enforcement is talking about easy encryption apps that you download from the app store. What we've learned from terrorists is that they will go to great lengths to encrypt and even hide their communications in code. They're not completely dependent on these easy-use apps that people are talking about.”
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Although some officials make it sound as if encryption renders intelligence work impossible, agencies can still gather critical information from messages they cannot read directly. Security experts point out that it is possible to access metadata with end-to-end encryption, and this tells you who someone is talking to, the date and time of the communication and some other information. In other words, encryption does not leave governments entirely in the dark. FBI Director James Comey has acknowledged this but has said that metadata is not enough. “Metadata doesn’t provide the content of any communication,” Comey has stated, “It’s incomplete information, and even this is difficult to access when time is of the essence.”
Even if governments have access to encrypted information, security analysts say that would not necessarily be enough to stop a terrorist attack. There is so much information—and so many false alarms—it is like searching for a needle in a haystack to predict what is going to happen. “After the fact, it’s really easy to claim you should have connected the dots,” Schneier says. “Before the fact, there are two million dots, and you don't see it coming.”
Scientists find way to reduce pesticide use and save millions for ornamental industry
By (ScienceDaily)
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"We found that some phytophthora strains were resistant to a specific kind of fungicide. Luckily, they were controlled by at least another kind of fungicide," said Ali, a faculty member at the UF/IFAS Mid-Florida Research and Education Center in Apopka, Florida. "This information is hugely important in letting growers and pesticide applicators know not to use the same kind of fungicides always, but to rotate different kinds of fungicides.
"Fewer fungicides are good for everybody, including nurseries, who would reduce the cost of production and are good for the consumers who would pay less for ornamentals and would additionally benefit from pesticide-free environment," Ali said.
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Florida's ornamental industry produces plants that are traded throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Researchers are trying to find ways to produce phytophthora-free plants and to prevent the spread of phytophthora.
And the winner is . . .
By group
Back around 2007/8, two high-profile papers claimed to produce, for the first time, skilful predictions of decadal climate change, based on new techniques of ocean state initialization in climate models. Both papers made forecasts of the future evolution of global mean and regional temperatures. . .
This month marks the end of the forecast period for Keenlyside et al and so their forecasts can now be cleanly compared to what actually happened. This is particularly interesting to RealClimate, since we offered a bet to the authors on whether the results would be accurate based on our assessment of their methodology. They ignored our offer but now the time period of the bet has passed, it’s worth checking how it would have gone.
Keenlyside and colleagues specifically forecast temperatures for the overlapping decadal periods of Nov 2000-Oct 2010, and Nov 2004-Oct 2015. At the end of the first period, we checked in on the forecast and noted that the predicted global cooling had not occurred. We can now update this for the second period as well.
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It is clear that prediction of global cooling or even stasis was way off the mark, with global warming continuing and observations running more than 0.15ºC warmer than the Keenlyside et al forecast.
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In October 2010, the German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung, asked the Keenlyside authors for their comment on the failure of the first period of the prediction. Mojib Latif responded that the continued warming did not speak against their study; one should look at this long term and not attach too much significance to a few years. And he said that if the forecast turns out to be wrong by 2015, “I will be the last one to deny it”. We showed these results to him yesterday and he responded that this was an experimental product, and that the main idea was to shake up the scientific community.
The Disgrace of Lamar Smith and the House Science Committee
By Kevin Drum
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Over the last few years, harassment of climate scientists via subpoenas and FOIA requests for every email they've ever written has become the go-to tactic of climate skeptics and deniers. The purpose is twofold. First, it intimidates scientists from performing climate research. Who needs the grief? Second, it provides a chance to find something juicy and potentially embarrassing in the trove of emails.
In the case of Lamar Smith vs. NOAA, the key fact is this: Smith has no reason to think the scientists in question have done anything wrong. None. He doesn't even pretend otherwise. He has simply asserted that it's "likely" that politics played a role in "adjusting" the climate data. But at no time has he presented any evidence at all to back this up.
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In any case, Smith is a disgrace, and it's a disgrace that Republicans allow him to chair a committee on science. Smith's view of science is simple: if it backs up his beliefs, it's fine. If it doesn't, it's obviously fraudulent. This is the attitude that leads to defunding of climate research or banning research on guns. After all, there's always the possibility that the results will be inconvenient, and in the world of Smith and his acolytes, that can't be allowed to stand. Full speed ahead and science be damned.
Palau protects marine wealth to pay for its future
By Christopher Pala
The recent decision by the Pacific island nation of Palau to end fishing in a California-sized swath of tuna-rich ocean comes at a time of record overfishing and will help the populations of bigeye and yellowfin to recover, scientists say.
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Another unpublished study, co-authored by Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia, suggests that this 10% will grow as the “lazy” genes they pass on to their spawn allow them to survive and multiply.
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This increase in density of ocean-going fish will mean that divers, who contribute about 40% to Palau’s economy, will have a more exciting experience – and therefore be prepared to pay a premium.
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To offset an expected loss of revenues from fishing licences sold to the foreign longline fleet, the government is planning to double the exit fee that tourists pay at the airport to $100, increasing income and hopefully decreasing their numbers.
Florida to rebuild jail on land prone to flooding. Climate change will only make things worse
By Raven Rakia
When it comes to climate change in the United States, Florida is first in line. Recent studies have shown that Florida is more at risk for damage from flooding due to climate change than any other state. Other studies have looked into how Florida is already starting to be affected by rising sea levels.
Which is why you should file this under this-will-not-end-well news. Despite a massive flood last year that triggered a natural gas explosion at Escambia County Jail in Pensacola, Fla., the Board of Commissioners recently decided to keep the jail in the same location instead of relocating.
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But last week, when the Escambia County Board of Commissioners were supposed to choose between three new locations for the jail, they decided to keep the same location and simply rebuild it there. Why would they do that? Well, during the public comment period, several (mainly small) business owners from the area testified that they did not want the jail moved and that the jail’s location was important for their business interests. . .
Granted, not all of the other locations were perfect. One proposed location was a Superfund site, and many had questioned whether it would be safe to build a jail there. “It’s changing the land use the remedy was designed for … when they did the cleanup [on the superfund site], they did it for industrial use based on an eight-hour standard … people should not be allowed to live there 24 hours,” Wilma Subra, a chemist who advised local group Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, told the Pensacola News Journal.
How Ancient People Saved the Pumpkin from Extinction
By Maddie Stone
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Over 10,000 years ago, wild squashes and gourds belonging to the genus Cucurbita were far too bitter for human taste buds. But these colorful fall vegetables were a favorite snack among North American megafauna, including mammoths and giant sloths, who dispersed their seeds far and wide. Alas, it was an ill-fated partnership. As America’s megafauna disappeared at the beginning of the Holocene, so did many Cucurbita species. The future was looking grim.
But then, an unlikely rescue: Humans began eating the wayward vegetables. As a new genetic analysis of 91 Cucurbita species shows, squash were independently domesticated in several parts of north America, beginning about 10,000 years ago—right around the same time that their megafaunal dispersers vanished. It’s not clear what exactly changed our minds on Cucurbita squashes—perhaps a few lucky strains had mutations that made them just a wee bit more palatable. Once the Cucurbita clan caught our attention, selective breeding took its course, and voila, rotund orange gourds that pair perfectly with cinnamon and sugar.
There is no record of US mass surveillance ever preventing a large terror attack
By Cory Doctorow
CIA Director John Brennan wants you to think the Paris attacks were Snowden's fault -- the "hand wringing" over mass surveillance has ended his agency's ability to "thwart" terrorists attacks "before they're carried out." There's only one problem with that: there's no evidence that the US's mass surveillance programs have ever prevented a major terrorist attack.
An internal, unclassified DHS document confirms this: "terror arrests between January 2014 and September 2015 linked to ISIS were largely of people trying to travel abroad, provide material support, or plan attacks that were essentially imaginary."
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A White House panel concluded in December 2013 that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone information was “not essential in preventing attacks.” A member of the panel took it one step further, when he told NBC News that there were no examples of the NSA stopping “any [terror attacks] that might have been really big” using the program.
How a Syrian refugee gets to the US
By Ashley Gold & Paul Blake
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Compared to Europe, where fingerprints and simple information are taken and migrants can resettle with little difficulty, US processes look very different and are much stricter.
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But to be eligible for permanent resettlement in another country, displaced persons have to leave Syria and find a camp run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in a neighbouring country.
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Certain indicators for why a refugee may be recommended for the US programme include: if he or she has a relative in the US or whether it is likely he or she will be welcomed by a certain community.
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Refugees are admitted at about a 50% acceptance rate after being subjected to "the most rigorous screening of any traveller to the US," an official told reporters in a conference call.
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Ten thousand people have been referred for resettlement in the US, but the US has not processed their applications yet.
Ex-ISIL captive says air raids help group's propaganda
By (Al Jazeera)
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In an interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the reporter - who was held for 10 months and released in 2014 - added that France's recent air strikes following the attacks "are actually helping" the group's propaganda.
Air strikes, which have intensified since Friday, empower the group's standing in Syria by making the local Syrian population feel vulnerable, and therefore more likely to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, also known as ISIS, he argued.
"ISIS, by striking us on French soil, wanted nothing than to provoke an escalation," the journalist said. "As a result, it's obvious what it was looking for was not for France to withdraw from the coalition striking it in Syria, but the opposite. It wanted to cause further escalation in the military involvement of France."
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On Tuesday, French defence officials said that, for the second time in less than 24 hours, fighter jets targeted Raqqa, the de-facto capital of ISIL in northern Syria.