Akein Scott, 19, was apprehended in the Little Woods section of eastern New Orleans, Louisiana. Police department spokeswoman Remi Braden told the Associated Press that no additional details would be made public until Thursday morning. … Read More
WD talks SSHDs: Black hybrid details revealed
Earlier this week, Western Digital debuted the fruit of a partnership with SanDisk: a line of solid state hybrid drives bearing its “Black” branding. In light of the announcement, WD vice president Matt Rutledge recently discussed with The Tech Report details regarding the company's newly release flash-mechanical hybrid and how… … Read More
Jury convicts Jodi Arias of first degree murder
A US jury convicted a 32-year-old woman, Jodi Arias, of first degree murder Wednesday after a trial which gripped US media attention with lurid details of sex, lies and graphic violence. Arias had been on trial since January accused of murdering her 30-year-old ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June…
Toddler taken hostage by off-duty Baltimore cop in standoff with SWAT team
The suspect, identified by police as James Smith, is holed up at a home on the West side of the city. SWAT members arrived at the scene several hours ago, and had removed a woman from the scene before paramedics arrived. Her clothing was seen to be covered in blood.SWAT members then returned to the barricaded site. At 6:40 pm Eastern Time Baltimore police tweeted that negotiators were working to try and peacefully resolve the situation.Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts has told reporters that the main concern at the moment is for the child still believed to be inside the home with Smith.”The concern I have right now is slowing this scene down and making sure we get the child out safely,” Batts said. UPDATE – For safety of emergency workers, certain operational details of barricade situation can not be disclosed. — Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) May 7, 2013 DETAILS TO FOLLOW … Read More
Tax havens invaded: UK offshores open up their databanks
“This may be the beginning of the end of bank secrecy havens,” Charles Intriago, the head of the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists, said at a G20 meeting in April.The offshore zones will provide a network of bank account information to Britain, as well as the ‘G5’- France, Germany, Italy, and Spain will also receive automated information.The information exchange with major EU countries will take place in the coming weeks or months, but will likely provide ‘old’ offshore data, predating the 2008 crisis. Later in 2013 the data will be distributed to tax authorities who will have potential evidence for lawsuits at their disposal.Information that will be exchanged is names, addresses, birthdays, and other bank account details.The influx of data will allow British and other authorities to research any individual or company suspected of stashing their money overseas.George Osborne has called on other countries to remove the “hiding places for those who seek to evade tax and hide their assets.”Tax havens exist worldwide, outside of the EU in Hong Kong as well as Malaysia.Some of the world’s ‘biggest’ tax havens, in terms of financial assets, are much nearer than the tropical beaches of the Atlantic Ocean. Neighboring Switzerland is a notorious destination for tucking away assets.Luxembourg, the largest tax haven within the EU, holds about 2.1 trillion euros ($2.73 trillion) in assets. Though yields in Luxembourg and Switzerland are as high as in the BVI or Bermuda, the security puts investors’ nerves as ease.At an April 19 meeting in Washington, D.C., the G20 agreed to mount pressure on Switzerland, Panama, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, as countries that didn’t meet international transparency standards.Bermuda and other offshore havens will offer up similar transparency measures to the US.Bermuda Minister of Finance Bob Richards confirmed Bermuda’s intentions to sign the FATCA IGA Model 2 treaty with the UK, US, and G5 countries.In response, US Treasury official Mark Mazur said: “The US Treasury welcomes this decision by the Government of Bermuda to sign one of the Model Foreign Account Transaction Compliance Act [FATCA] Intergovernmental Agreements. We appreciate Bermuda’s leadership and look forward to helping facilitate an efficient exchange of tax information and strengthening Bermuda’s commitment to global tax transparency,” the Bermuda Sun reported. … Read More
US military secrets leaked to Chinese hackers for three years
QinetiQ North America was attacked by a Shanghai-based hacker group from 2007 to 2010, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The hacking collective has been coined the “Comment Crew” by security experts. The company is known for its contributions to national security – including software used by US forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Comment Crew’s continuous spying reportedly provided China with a wealth of secret information on QinetiQ’s drones, satellites, military robotics, and the US Army’s combat helicopter fleet. The spies also stole several terabytes – equivalent to hundreds of millions of pages – of documents and data on weapons programs. China’s military may have also stolen programming code and design details that it could use to disable some of the most sophisticated US weaponry. The situation could have a crippling effect on America’s defense capabilities.“God forbid we get into a conflict with China but if we did we could face a major embarrassment, where we try out all these sophisticated weapons systems and they don’t work,” said Richard Clarke, former special adviser to President George W. Bush on cyber security. But the hacking could have been easily prevented, if QinetiQ would have picked up on one of the many warnings it received along the way.Failing to connect the dotsQinetiQ ignored the first sign of spying in 2007, when an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service notified the company that two people were apparently losing classified information on their laptops. QinetiQ failed to act with caution, according to Brian Dykstra, a forensics expert hired to conduct the investigation into the lost data.“They just felt like it was this limited little thing, like they’d picked up some virus,” he said. Dykstra was given only four days to complete the investigation. He said the company didn’t give him the time or data necessary to determine whether more employees had been successfully targeted. In his report, Dykstra warned that QinetiQ is “likely not seeing the full extent” of the intrusion. His assumptions were soon proved correct. In 2008, NASA alerted the company that hackers had tried to enter its system from one of QinetiQ’s computers. But QinetiQ still failed to connect the dots, treating each series of attacks over the next several months as unrelated incidents. The company’s ignorance was welcomed by Comment Crew, who continued to raid servers and gather more than 13,000 internal passwords in the first 2 ½ years.An easy hack?In 2010, the hackers logged onto QinetiQ’s system with incredible ease – through the company’s remote access system, just like an ordinary employee. The hack was made easy because of QinetiQ’s failure to use a two-factor authentication, allowing Comment Crew to use the stolen password of a network administrator. But it gets even worse – the company had discovered its own vulnerability months before, but failed to fix it the problem. Over the course of four days, the hackers attacked at least 14 servers, eventually hitting the jackpot when they discovered an inventory of weapons-systems technology and source code throughout the company. When QinetiQ finally caught on in 2010 and hired two outside firms to help combat the hackers. It was soon revealed that Comment Crew had established near permanent residence in the company’s computers. The firms also discovered that the hackers had walked away with information on microchips that control the company’s robots. The chip architecture could help China test ways to take over or defeat US robots or aerial drones, said Noel Sharkey, a drones and robotics expert at Britain’s Sheffield University. The hackers also targeted at least 17 employees working on the Condition Based Maintenance program, which collects data on Apache and Blackhawk helicopters deployed around the world. Thus far, there has been no word from the State Department regarding Comment Crew’s hacks into QinetiQ systems. Washington has the power to revoke the company’s charter to handle military technology if it finds negligence. However, it appears the US government is doing just the opposite. In May 2012, QinetiQ received a $4.7 million cybersecurity contract from the US Transportation Department. … Read More
How pro-austerity executives use loopholes to break the debt
It’s been a while since we’ve heard much from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, but a new report details how the major corporations that back a group founded by the pro-austerity former lawmakers take advantage of a loophole to avoid paying taxes on some of what they pay their CEOs. The report, from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, finds that between 2009 and 2011, top executives at the 90 publicly held corporate members of the Fix the Debt coalition raked in at least $953 million — and as much as $1.6 billion — through the “performance pay” loophole, which counts some executive compensation as a tax-deductible business expense, instead of a salary. Fix the Debt, founded by Simpson and Bowles, is one of the many groups tied to Wall Streeter cum policy entrepreneur Pete Peterson, who has spent the last 20 years trying to reduce the debt, in large part through cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare. The group has attracted some of the largest corporations in the country as sponsors, as well as former lawmakers, giving it serious clout in Washington.Continue Reading… … Read More
