By Anthony Gucciardi

A new precedent has been set. Despite extensive denial that drone strikes would endanger Americans, Attorney General Eric Holder has now openly admitted that four US citizens were killed through overseas drone strikes since 2009.

By Marc Goodman and Andrew Hessel

There have always been hackers. If we look back 30 years to the earliest days of the personal computer, the first iteration were DIY types with cobbled-together devices, tinkering in garages and basements and meeting periodically to share their stories. Their intentions were mostly non-malicious: they hacked for fun and to learn what was possible. From these dabblers came the first generation of technology entrepreneurs, such as Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

But, as computing grew into a global and highly profitable industry, hacker numbers swelled and a darker side to the culture emerged. In the early days of criminal hacking it was about showing what was possible – breaking into systems for fun and the challenge. Later, a profit motive emerged, which attracted criminal elements that were serious, organised and global. As a result, the US now classifies cyberspace as a new domain of battle – as significant as air, land or sea – and has new agencies to secure it.

But there’s another domain of battle coming in the near future, one that is as real, yet as intangible, as cyberspace. It is likely to become the most com- plex yet: it’s easy to hack and hard to defend because there’s no way to live without it. It is the domain of biology.

Read the entire article here

By Kit Eaton

New survey results from Pew Research show teenagers have dramatically embraced social media over the last seven years, shifting their attitudes about online privacy and how they share personal information.

In 2006, just 79% of respondents said they posted a photo of themselves to social media, but 91% said so in the new survey. Seventy-one percent now post the city or town where they live, up from 61%.

Read the entire article here

By Michael Snyder

Have you ever wondered who controls the mainstream media?  In America today, we are more “connected” than ever.  The average American watches 153 hours of television a month, and we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet.  If someone could control the production of all of that media, that would make them immensely powerful.  They would literally be in a position to tell people what to think.  Well, what if I told you that there are just six enormous media conglomerates that combine to produce about 90 percent of all the media that Americans consume.  Would that alarm you?  It should alarm you.  The truth is that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs are greatly shaped by what we allow into our minds.  After all, they don’t call it “programming” for no reason.  Even those of us that realize that we are connected to “the matrix” probably greatly underestimate the tremendous influence that the media has over us.  We live at a time when it is absolutely imperative to think for ourselves, but most Americans are being absolutely overwhelmed with information and seem more than content to let others do their thinking for them.  Sadly, this is greatly contributing to the downfall of our society.

And of course the mainstream media desperately does not want you to look at “the man behind the curtain”.  They just want you to stay plugged into the “programming” that they are feeding you without asking any questions.

Fortunately, a growing minority of Americans are waking up and are starting to reject the mainstream media.  An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that the mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment and that it is promoting the agenda of the establishment.

So why is the mainstream media so bad?  The following are 7 things about the mainstream media that they do not want you to know…

#1 The Mainstream Media Has Very Deep Ties To The Establishment

Did you know that the president of CBS and the president of ABC both have brothers that are top officials in the Obama administration?

The big news networks have developed an almost incestuous relationship with the federal government in recent years.  But of course the same could be said of the relationship that the media has with the big corporations that own stock in their parent companies and that advertise on their networks.

This is one of the reasons why we very rarely ever see any hard hitting stories on the big networks anymore.  The flow of information through the corporate-dominated media is very tightly controlled, and there are a lot of gatekeepers that make sure that the “wrong stories” don’t get put out to the public.  As a result, many of the “big stories” that have come out in recent years were originally broken by the alternative media.

#2 The Mainstream Media Gets Things Wrong Very Frequently

Read the entire article here

By Kate Golden

Minnesota researchers found 56 chemicals — including cocaine — in the state’s waters, according to two studies released today that raise questions about potential impacts on wildlife and human health.

Environmental experts said the discoveries in lakes, rivers and streams increase the pressure on Wisconsin to figure out what’s in its water. A key Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources official said that the state’s waters were likely also contaminated, but that the state had no money for such monitoring.

The chemicals were detected at trace amounts in 47 of 50 Minnesota lakes, including many in relatively pristine parts of the state.

Some of the most troubling chemicals are thought to be endocrine disruptors, which can block or act like hormones in people and wildlife. They are used in pharmaceuticals, personal care products and industrial processes, but are largely unregulated.

Read the entire article here

The odds are you are not just a face in the crowd any longer. Even if your picture isn’t plastered all over social networking and photo-sharing sites, facial recognition technology in public places is making it harder if not impossible to remain anonymous. Lesley Stahl reports on the new ways this technology is being used that even has one of its inventors calling it too intrusive. Her 60 Minutes report will be broadcast Sunday, May 19 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Professor Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon, who researches how technology impacts privacy, stunned Stahl with an experiment. He photographed random students on the campus and in short order, not only identified several of them, but in a number of cases found their personal information, including social security numbers, just using a facial recognition program he downloaded for free. Acquisti says smart-phones will make “facial searches” as common as Google searches in the future. And nearly everybody can be subject to such prying, even those who are careful about their Internet use.

Read the entire article here

Related: Google-Berg Merger Ushers in Planned-Opolis Future in the Hybrid Age

By Steve Kovach

Google‘s big keynote at its I/O developers conference this week wore me out.

By Nicholas West

Discussion of the “Singularity” — the moment when computer intelligence surpasses that of humans to such an extent that humans become practically redundant — has been gaining steam across the media spectrum. Ray Kurzweil pointed to 2045 as the date of this tipping point, after which anyone unprepared for merging with machines would likely face a very unproductive personal future.

With the rise of automation, a background debate echoes the idea of full spectrum human-machine integration. For those who might overlook the full theoretical endgame of the Singularity, including transhumanism and immortality, the economic singularity is showing itself already.

The outsourcing of human jobs as a side effect of globalization has arguably contributed to the current unemployment crisis in the United States. However, a growing trend sees humans done away with altogether, even in those countries where U.S. jobs have landed, as a fully robotic workforce takes over – curiously by the same singularity date of 2045 – according to professor Moshe Vardi, a Rice University computer science professor.

So what does this mean for the future of human relevance?

Robot proponents have often cited the brutal working conditions of factory labor, inefficiency and corporate bottom lines as principal reasons for replacing humans.  Human beings are slowly but surely becoming redundant in areas as diverse as manufacturing, product fulfillment, and even warfare. However, it is the rise of artificial intelligence which suggests that the former argument stating that humans could maintain positions requiring high skill and decision making may have been wishful thinking. Many computer science experts are beginning to conclude that complete human obsolescence in the workforce is a more likely outcome.

Read the entire article here

D-Wave, the small company that sells the world’s only commercial quantum computer, has just bagged an impressive new customer: a collaboration between Google, NASA and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association.

The three organizations have joined forces to install a D-Wave Two, the computer company’s latest model, in a facility launched by the collaboration — the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. The lab will explore areas such as machine learning — making computers sort and analyse data on the basis of previous experience. This is useful for functions such as language translation, image searches and voice-command recognition. “We actually think quantum machine learning may provide the most creative problem-solving process under the known laws of physics,” says a blog post from Google describing the deal.

Read the entire article here

By J. D. Heyes

The scandal surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s illicit, politically-motivated scrutiny of conservative, patriot, Tea Party and pro-Israel groups continues to expand daily, as more information is learned about its depth, breadth and scope.

In addition to delaying tax-exempt status for these organizations, the IRS also demanded donor rolls and printouts of Facebook posts to determine who was contributing to the organizations and what sort of information they were putting out in regards to the current administration, and what books people were reading, according to a Politico review of documents from 11 of the targeted groups.

That review “shows the agency wanted to know everything – in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking,” the website reported. “The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.”

Some tea party groups even worried they’d be punished for followers’ Facebook comments, Politico reported – a chilling prospect, given the huge First Amendment implications of any such shenanigans.