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PetroChina to join Exxon on giant Iraqi oilfield

“China’s biggest energy firm PetroChina will join Exxon Mobil in developing Iraq’s giant West Qurna oilfield and is in talks with Lukoil to buy into a second project at the field, industry sources said on Friday. China is already the top foreign player in Iraq’s southern oilfields and a deal at West Qurna would boost its dominance and could make PetroChina the biggest single foreign investor. PetroChina partners BP at Rumaila, Iraq’s biggest oilfield, and operates the Halfaya field. The company was the first foreign firm to sign an oil service deal in Iraq after U.S.-led forces toppled former president Saddam Hussein.” Continue reading →

What It’s Like to Get a National-Security Letter

“I spoke with Brewster Kahle, the founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive, perhaps the greatest of our digital libraries, and of the Wayback Machine, which allows you to browse an archive of the Web that reaches back to 1996. He is one of very few people in the United States who can talk about receiving a national-security letter. Hundreds of thousands of national-security letters have been sent. But only the plaintiffs in the three successful challenges so far—Kahle; Nicholas Merrill, of Calyx Internet Access; and the Connecticut librarians George Christian, Barbara Bailey, Peter Chase, and Janet Nocek—are known to have had them rescinded.” Continue reading →

Weight Watchers trying to cash in on Obamacare healthy workers initiative

“Called Health Solutions, the division partners with corporations to create incentive programs that range from partially subsidizing Weight Watchers program fees for employees to giving employees a discount on health insurance if they attend a certain amount of meetings. Employees can also attend Weight Watchers meetings in their office, or use online tools customizable to the company. The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, will raise the incentive level caps to 30 percent to allow employers to reward healthy employees with lower insurance premiums, or penalize unhealthy workers with higher premiums.” Continue reading →

Targeted booze strikes: Aerial drone drops beer at South Africa music festival

“Revellers at a South African outdoor rock festival no longer need to queue to slake their thirst — a flying robot will drop them beer by parachute. After clients place an order using a smartphone app, a drone zooms 15 metres (50 feet) above the heads of the festival-goers to make the delivery. Carel Hoffmann, director of the Oppikoppi festival held on a dusty farm in the country’s northern Limpopo province, said the app registers the position of users using the GPS satellite chips on their phones. ‘The delivery guys have a calibrated delivery drone. They send it to the GPS position and drops it with a parachute,’ he explained.” Continue reading →

What It Means to Be An NSA “Target”: We Need Immediate FISA Amendments Act Reform

“In plain English: the NSA believes it not only can (1) intercept the communications of the target, but also (2) intercept communications about a target, even if the target isn’t a party to the communication. The most likely way to assess if a communication is “about” a target is to conduct a content analysis of communications, probably based on specific search terms or selectors. And that, folks, is what we call a content dragnet. Because the target remains a non-US person, the most robust protection for Americans’ communications under the FISA Amendments Act flies out the window.” Continue reading →

Will Disney Soon Be Able to Break into Computers… Legally?

“Something called The IP Commission Report (subtitled A Report Of The Commission On The Theft Of American Intellectual Property) just crossed my desk. This new and very impressively produced report, authored by seven sets of hyper-impressive credentials, informs Congress that they should change US laws to go far, far beyond anything that has been authorized previously. On page 6, (by the report’s internal numbering), we get a bit of an overture – a foretaste of what’s to come. It says this: ‘Companies that experience cyber theft ought to be able to retrieve their electronic files or prevent the exploitation of their stolen information.'” Continue reading →

Digital Diversification: How to Do It

“It is no secret that the US has a total lack of privacy, outrageous prison sentences for relatively minor and frivolous so-called ‘crimes’ (see the tragic case of Aaron Swartz), and seizures at the drop of a hat under the flimsiest of pretexts, among other contemptible practices. Would you really want to keep your digital presence solely under US jurisdiction if you didn’t have to? Fortunately, if you answered ‘no,’ it is relatively easy to move your digital presence across borders to a friendly jurisdiction. Paul Rosenberg has the details and he fills us in on the article below.” Continue reading →

Obama met with tech executives privately to discuss government surveillance

“President Barack Obama quietly met with the CEOs of Apple Inc, AT&T Inc as well as other technology and privacy representatives on Thursday to discuss government surveillance. Google Inc computer scientist Vint Cerf and civil liberties leaders also participated in the meeting, along with Apple’s Tim Cook and AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, Politico said late Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The closed-door meeting followed another private session on Tuesday between top Obama administration officials, industry lobbyists and privacy advocates, Politico reported, adding that the latest meeting ‘was organized with greater secrecy.'” Continue reading →