Coss

Essentially it works like this. I borrow money, I then pay it back. Simple really. If I fail to pay it back, because my circumstances have changed, or because I entered into an agreement whose conditions were so onerous that I couldn't pay it back, or I just borrowed more that I could possibly pay back, like twice or three times my earning potential, then, I am in the same position as Greece.

Well they are a very friendly people

The FBI Spent $775K on Hacking Team’s Spy Tools Since 2011 THE FBI IS one of the clients who bought hacking software from the private Italian spying agency Hacking Team, which was itself the victim of a recent hack. It’s long been suspected that the FBI used Hacking Team’s tools, but with the publication yesterday of internal documents, invoices, emails and even product source code from the company, we now have the first concrete evidence that this is true. The FBI is not in good company here. According to several spreadsheets within the hacked archive, which contain a list of Hacking Team’s customers, many of the other governments who bought the same software are repressive regimes, such as Sudan and Bahrain. The documents show that the FBI first purchased the company’s “RCS†in 2011. RCS stands for “Remote Control Service,†otherwise known as “Galileo,†Hacking Team’s premiere spy product. RCS is a simple piece of hacking software that has been used by the Ethiopian regime to target journalists based in Washington DC. It has also been detected in an attack on a Moroccan media outlet, and a human rights activist from the United Arab Emirates. Once a target’s computer has been infected, RCS is able to siphon off data, and listen in on communications before they have been encrypted. According to researchers based at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, who have monitored the use of RCS throughout the world, the tool can also “record Skype calls, e-mails, instant messages, and passwords typed into a Web browser.†To top that off, RCS is also capable of switching on a target’s web camera and microphone. Hacking Team has generated a total of 697,710 Euros ($773,226.64) from the FBI since 2011, according to the hacked spreadsheets. In 2015, the FBI spent 59,855 Euros on “maintenance,†and in 2014 the agency spent the same amount on “license/upgrades.†No expenditure was recorded for the whole of 2013. In 2012, however, the FBI allegedly spent 310,000 Euros for Hacking Team’s services, all on licenses or upgrades, and the year before it spent 268,000 Euros. A final column on one of the hacked spreadsheets is entitled “Exploitâ€. For the FBI, the entry is written as “Yes.†Though it’s unclear exactly what this means, we can infer that the FBI’s version of RCS came with an exploit of some kind that could gain access to user’s computers, rather than being deployed through social-engineering means. Regardless, the FBI has been known to hack the computers of criminals in the past. In fact, the agency has been using malware since at least 2002 for all sorts of criminal cases, and the FBI develops some of its own tools. In 2012, “Operation Torpedo†was launched, which involved loading malware onto a number of child pornography sites, and identifying the IP addresses of anyone who visited. A similar operation was launched shortly after, in order to catch users of Freedom Hosting, a dark web hosting company. Those were both broad attacks, designed to sweep up as many offenders as possible. Hacking Team’s tools, on the other hand, are used for more targeted surveillance of specific individuals or groups. According to the hacked spreadsheets, the FBI has used RCS against 35 targets, although it is unclear who these targets are. The FBI did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment. One interesting tidbit from the spreadsheet is that it appears that Hacking Team has not been selling these products directly to the FBI. Though the FBI is listed as the client, its “Partner/Fulfillment Vehicle†is listed as “CICOM USA.†That name is familiar. Earlier this year, an investigation from Motherboard revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration had been secretly purchasing surveillance technology from Hacking Team. Within that contract, $2.4 million was sent “between the DEA’s Office of Investigative Technology and a government contractor named Cicom USA,†according to Motherboard. An invoice with the file name “Commessa019.2014. CICOM USA x FBI.xls,†also included in the Hacking Team archive, lists a “One year renewal for Remote Control System,†charged to Cicom USA. The invoice says that the product lasts from July 1, 2014 to the June 30, 2015. The file name for the invoice explicitly includes the FBI, and not the DEA. However, the spreadsheet with the client list shows that the FBI is, in fact, joined by the DEA and the DOD in buying products from Hacking Team, which both also use Cicom USA as their “fulfilment vehicles.†Cicom USA is little more than a shell company for Hacking Team. “They have the same address, they have the same telephone number,†as Hacking Team’s US office, Edin Omanovic, a technologist at Privacy International, told WIRED in a phone interview. As for what protections might be in place to make sure that the FBI (or any US government agency) is using this technology responsibly, it’s all a bit hazy. “We think they get court orders, and we have even seen a few, but the applications don’t really describe how the software works, or how they will get it onto the target’s device,†Christopher Soghoian, Principal Technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, told WIRED in an encrypted chat. The problem is that the discussion around law enforcement using hacking as a means of information gathering has never been carried out in public. “Congress has never explicitly granted law enforcement agencies the power to hack. And there have never been any congressional hearings on the topic,†Soghoian continued. “We need to have a national debate about whether we want law enforcement agencies to be able to hack into the computers of targets. This is too dangerous a tool for them to start using by themselves.†Wired.com

FEW NEWS EVENTS can unleash more schadenfreude within the security community than watching a notorious firm of hackers-for-hire become a hack target themselves. In the case of the freshly disemboweled Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team, the company may also serve as a dark example of a global surveillance industry that often sells to any government willing to pay, with little regard for that regime’s human rights record. On Sunday night, unidentified hackers published a massive, 400 gigabyte trove on bittorrent of internal documents from the Milan-based Hacking Team, a firm long accused of unethical sales of tools that help governments break into target computers and phones. The breached trove includes executive emails, customer invoices and even source code; the company’s twitter feed was hacked, controlled by the intruders for nearly 12 hours, and used to distribute samples of the company’s hacked files. The security community spent Sunday night picking through the spy firm’s innards and in some cases finding what appear to be new confirmations that Hacking Team sold digital intrusion tools to authoritarian regimes. Those revelations may be well timed to influence an ongoing U.S. policy debate over how to control spying software, with a deadline for public debate on new regulations coming this month. One document pulled from the breached files, for instance, appears to be a list of Hacking Team customers along with the length of their contracts. These customers include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and several United States agencies including the DEA, FBI and Department of Defense. Other documents show that Hacking Team issued an invoice to Ethiopia’s Information Network Security Agency (the spy agency of a country known to surveil and censor its journalists and political dissidents) for licensing its Remote Control System, a spyware tool. For Sudan, a country that’s the subject of a UN embargo, the documents show a $480,000 invoice to its National Intelligence and Security Services for the same software. “These are the equivalents of the Edward Snowden leaks for the surveillance industry,†says Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International. “There are few countries [Hacking Team] aren’t willing to sell to. There are few lines they aren’t willing to cross.†In its marketing materials, Hacking Team describes its RCS product as “a solution designed to evade encryption by means of an agent directly installed on the device†an agency is monitoring. “You want to look through your target’s eyes,†reads the script of one of the company’s videos, shown below. “You have to hack your target.†Last year, researchers at Toronto-based Internet surveillance analysis group Citizen Lab and antivirus firm Kaspersky revealed Hacking Team software that targets every mobile operating system to take total control over phones. Hacking Team hasn’t yet responded to WIRED’s request for comment. One Hacking Team engineer, Christian Pozzi, seemed to defend his employer briefly on Twitter, writing that the company’s attackers were “spreading lies about the services we provide.†His feed was soon hacked and then deleted. Hacking Team’s newly exposed business practices call into question whether current regulations effectively prevent a private firm from selling hacking software to any government in the world. One written exchange between Hacking Team’s executives and UN officials shows the UN questioning Hacking Team’s sales to Sudan. A letter from the UN to the company references a March 2015 letter Hacking Team sent the UN, in which it argued that its spying tools didn’t count as a weapon, and so didn’t fall under the UN’s arms embargo. (The UN disagreed.) “Sudan is one of the most strictly embargoed countries in the world,†says Chris Soghoian, a privacy activist and lead technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union who first spotted the UN correspondence in the Hacking Team data dump. “If Hacking Team believes they can lawfully sell to Sudan, they believe they can sell to anyone.†That issue of whether hacking tools are defined as weapons in the terms of arms control agreements couldn’t be more timely: An arms control pact called the Wassenaar Arrangement has been hotly debated in recent weeks over its measures that would control the international export of intrusion software. The US Department of Commerce has opened the process to public comment, a window that ends on July 20. The Wassenaar Arrangement has been criticized by the hacker community as limiting security research and preventing the sharing of penetration testing tools. But Privacy International’s Eric King argues that the practices of Hacking Team demonstrate why the pact is necessary, along with what he describes as “carve-outs†to protect security research. “What’s clear is that these companies can’t be left to their own devices,†says King. “Some form of regulation is needed to prevent these companies from selling to human rights abusers. That’s a hard policy question, and one tool won’t be a silver bullet. But regulation and export controls should be part of the policy response.†The issue of whether hacking tools are defined as weapons in the terms of arms control agreements couldn't be more timely Despite Hacking Team being based in Italy, the US Department of Commerce’s still-evolving export control regulations may still apply to the company, says the ACLU’s Chris Soghoian. He points to two firms he spotted in Hacking Team’s breached files who appeared to be reselling the company’s tools: Cyber Point International in Maryland and Horizon Global Group in California. The hacked documents are far from the first evidence that Hacking Team has sold its tools to authoritarian governments. Researchers at Citizen Lab have accused Hacking Team of selling to countries including Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, who used it to spy on a political dissident who was later beaten by thugs. WIRED reported in 2013 on an American activist who was apparently targeted by Turkey using Hacking Team tools. But Hacking Team has responded with denials, criticisms of Citizen Lab’s methods, and claims that it doesn’t sell to “repressive regimes.†“Hacking Team has continuously thrown mud, obfuscated, tried to confuse the truth,†says Privacy International’s King. “This release helps set the record straight on that, and shows their deviousness and duplicity in responding to what are legitimate criticisms.†Wired.com

yes yes very amusing

At the private school where I did a bit of teaching, the two cute lady teachers would often sit in the back of my class, I sure just to listen to my accent, coz they never said "Hello Hansum Man"

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2015 - I really liked the first one, this is arguably better than the first. You don't need to see the first one first, but it expands the story if you do. If there's a third I'll definitely see it. The cast is pure quality, the stories good and the setting not so far from LOS. Well worth a watch.

5555555555

Yes, email marketing in particular.

So true

Hey Kong, for the sake of argument, who paid for your education and health care, even if it was sub-standard or other wise, in your opinion, pre and post puberty?

The place where I spend 8 hours a day, at the moment, recommends this one, to clients, as we don't do email set ups or marketing. Regarded as a good solution for people who want to send and handle emails in a commercial manner. My 2 bahts worth.

Write it yourself, they won't check.

"police believe that it is a case of suicide but until the note is translated the case will remain open" At least they are appearing to keep an open mind.

dble

Man crushed to death by robot at car factory A worker at a Volkswagen factory in Germany has died, after a robot grabbed him and crushed him against a metal plate. The 22-year-old man died in hospital after the accident at a plant in Baunatal, 100km north of Frankfurt. He was working as part of a team of contractors installing the robot when it grabbed him, according to the German car manufacturer. Heiko Hillwig, from Volkswagen, blamed "human error" rather than the robot. Image caption Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn visited the Kassel-Baunatal plant in 2010, where the worker was killed He said: "It [robot] can be programmed to perform various tasks in the assembly process. "It normally operates within a confined area at the plant, grabbing auto parts and manipulating them." Another contractor was there at the time when the accident happened, on Monday, but wasn't harmed, He declined to give any more details about the case, citing an "ongoing investigation". German news agency dpa reported that prosecutors were now investigating and deciding who to prosecute. http://www.bbc.co.uk...-at-car-factory

Police hunting down blowjob bargirl Pattaya Police have put out a dragnet on a hunt for a woman who damaged that coastal community’s pristine image with one photograph. Long held by the public as an esteemed home of the virtuous and upright, Pattaya’s image was possibly forever soiled yesterday by a photograph of a woman on her knees giving a blowjob to an Asian tourist in the middle of a public bar on Pattaya's Walking Street. Responding to the photos which spread online to the shock and outrage of two or three people, police Cmd. Sukkatat Poompanmuang said yesterday he has ordered his officers to track down the lady in question to charge her with public obscenity. The photos spread online yesterday provoking an uproar among a public part-titillated and part-horrified. "Oh woman! She feels like sucking it, so she just does, showing off her pro skill in the middle of the pub!†wrote user Nangfa Yakuza, who first posted the photo online. “The guy seems satisfied and doesn't shy away at all!" The photos were soon taken offline. "This is too nasty,†another user commented. “This is why foreigners look down on Thai women.†Sukkatat added that police have been able to identify the entertainment complex where the BJ seen-round-the-net was given, but admitted he’s uncertain whether "she's a woman or not." If found guilty, the bar's owner and the lady in question will be prosecuted, INN reported. http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2015/06/30/police-hunting-down-blowjob-bargirl

Slightly related occurrence, I can remember seeing wives and children of Lao Important folk, being allowed to greet their Family at the plane door and then waltzing straight through the airport, through doors that bypassed all the immigration and customs. They still do it, on exit, they call it a VIP lounge, only the best of the evil communists get to use that, guided by uniformed staff

How bizarre, and yet fabulous, this should increase tourism from San Francisco

"Pol Lt Gen Kamronwit had confessed to owning the pistol" and now... Camronwit's gun found to be unregistered JAPANESE forensic authorities have learned that the gun the former Metropolitan Police commissioner Camronwit Toopkrajank had allegedly taken from Thailand was not legally registered, a source said yesterday. Authorities took the North American Arms .22-calibre gun to determine its power and check if it was legally registered after Camronwit was arrested at Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Monday for carrying a weapon. A highly placed source in Japan said the gun had only Arabic numbers and English letters crafted by the factory that produced the gun, identifying the country in which the gun was sold. He did not say which country. The source said if the gun was legally registered and taxes were paid, it should have had Thai numbers and letters on the handle as the North American Arms .22 is a small pistol. The source said it would depend on the Japanese prosecutors' judgement as to whether Camronwit would face heavier punishment for illegally carrying arms. He said carrying a gun is a serious crime, and whether or not the pistol was legal or not may be irrelevant. Camronwit remains in police custody in Tokyo, pending prosecution. National police chief General Somyot Poompanmuang instructed Police Region One commissioner Pol Lt-General Amnuay Nimano to find out how Camronwit was able to depart Thailand with the gun, and Amnuay then instructed Samut Prakan provincial chief Pol Maj-General Thana Chuwong to probe the incident. Thana reported that Camronwit had arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport with three bags that were checked in, while his two carry-on bags - one on wheels and another with a strap - passed through X-ray without any banned objects being detected. He was flying business class with Thai Airways. Camronwit's aide had earlier said that the former top cop usually packed his medication in checked-in luggage, but the day he was arrested in Tokyo, his medication bag was in his hand luggage. The pistol was found in his medication bag. The former police officer left Thailand for Japan on a Thursday by Thai Airways flight TG 640 at 9pm and was arrested while he was about to leave Japan for Thailand on Monday at 5pm. http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Camronwits-gun-found-to-be-unregistered-30263264.html

I'm sorry I can't, I heard it on the radio, a Lady scientist it was and if memory serves, the time being referred to was the last warm period before the last ice age, though I could be wrong. 150,000 years is a quite a few ice ages for the ice not to melt between.

What us 'Evil Climate Change Deniers' are disputing, is not so much that the climate is changing, because it is, has always and always will, what I/we particularly dispute, is the alarmist propaganda, the exaggeration and the arrogance of the 'Saint-like Global Warming proponents' who take every observation, of the warming 'Story' and denounce with vitriol, man's existence on the planet. At the same time and often in the same breath, they similarly denounce, any observations to the contrary. A few hundred years ago, this is what the religious narrative was around God and the Devil. Everything good was the result of God's beneficence and people flocked to be next to God (Religious Hierarchy, flocks of people being Godly), everything bad was down to the Devil and his folk (everyone not in the religious group). The basic issues I see are that the models are often wrong and spectacularly so, so I give them a trust rating of about 50/50. The actual records don't go back far enough, to remove the variability in the data, a lot of the projected and measured data form the past, i.e. CO2 in bubbles in the ice, may be subject to variability and certainly will have a margin of error. So I give them a trust rating of about 60/40 in their favour. Other data is just plain misinterpreted - let's give one example: Pollen and insect fragments being found in Ice, in the Middle and North of Greenland that dates from a time when CO2 levels were much higher. This is interpreted as Ice in Greenland being absent at this time. This is then followed by 'if all the ice in Greenland melted the sea levels would rise to a catastrophic level, millions of people would be displaced and die'. OK. 1/. In order for the pollen etc to be found in Ice in the Middle and North of Greenland, there has to be Ice there when the pollen etc landed on it. Ergo the Ice was not melted and gone. 2/. No corresponding evidence of sea levels being catastrophically higher is presented. 3/. Sure. millions of people would be displaced/die if sea levels rose that much. But if people insist on living on land that is tidal and flood prone, that will happen. The best time sell coastal land is at low tide. Seriously, the overpopulation, of places like Bangladesh, is what results in people living in marginally viable places, not Global Warming. I'm happy to understand that the sea level is rising, we know for example that it's risen about 10m in the last 10,000 years (approximate) this is because people are excavating archaeological sites at this depth in the Mediterranean that date from this time. How? Aqualung, Jacques Cousteau. So the current claims from the 'Saint-like Global Warming proponents' don't account for this rise, unless we allow for natural climate variability, the assertion that we're about to experience massive acceleration in any of this, is based on accurate data from only the last 100 or less years. I am sure that Anthropogenic contributions to climate change exist, but as I've said before, they are fiddling around the edges and not the primary cause. Remember, the human race used the think that Humans/God/the Earth, were the centre of the Universe. And a big proportion of the populace still do. Bloody arrogant, for a bunch of bipedal apes that can't even solve problems like overpopulation.

I do wonder when I see this stuff, especially when you think that US and China both, could probably take out all of the regions subs (excepting perhaps Japan and Sth Korea) in 1 flyover of a few bombers. It must be about prestige. At least Laos isn't buying subs. Laos is gonna build a railway for China to get to Thailand, at a cost of about 90% of GDP, and then being a Thane, thank China for the opportunity. Then about 100 people in Laos will be rich beyond their wildest dreams and be able to buy six Lamborghinis instead of two, wives will have 25 Gucci handbags instead of 5, kids will abuse peasants twice as much. Slightly off topic I know, but there is a guy in Vientiane, who bought a brand new Range Rover, not for driving, but to put next to his grand piano, in his mansion, because he likes the way it looks.

"They already downgraded the project from 2 to 1 runway initially." not much of a hub, 1 runway.