Month: February 2016

(credit: Paul)

On Thursday, Apple filed its formal legal response to the standoff between it and the Department of Justice.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook again reiterated the company’s firm commitment to privacy and its resolve to fight a new court order issued earlier this month. If the order stands up to legal challenges, Apple would be forced to create a new customized iOS firmware that would remove the passcode lockout on a seized iPhone as part of the ongoing San Bernardino terrorism investigation.

In a call with reporters on Thursday, Apple executives dubbed this customized iOS firmware a "government OS" and added that it would have to make an "FBI forensics lab" at its Cupertino headquarters.

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials are the gold standard for determining if a drug works—or at least if it works better than other drugs that are currently out there. These are the trials in which some people get an intervention for a condition, while similar people get a placebo, and no one (neither the patients nor the doctors) knows who is getting what. The researchers then compare how everyone has fared after a certain amount of time has elapsed.

Patients enroll in these trials to advance medical knowledge and to help future patients by identifying the most effective therapies. But in order to use those therapies, doctors need to be informed of what they are—the results of clinical trials must be disseminated. That, alas, is not really happening so much.

ClinicalTrials.gov is the US government’s repository of clinical trials. It was established in 1997 and made public in 2000. As of September 2007, the FDA stipulated that all clinical trials of drugs, biologics, and devices had to be registered on the database within three weeks of enrolling their last participants. The results of the trial had to be registered within a year after the trial’s completion.

The site of the leaking well (top) relative to a nearby community. (credit: Stephen Conley)

In a paper released Thursday, a group of scientists published the results of 13 flyovers performed during the recent Aliso Canyon natural gas leak. They conclude that the well leak had effectively doubled the methane (CH₄) emission rate of the Los Angeles Basin.

The researchers, who hailed from Scientific Aviation, UC Davis, UC Irvine, CU Boulder, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also concluded that the natural gas leak was the second-biggest failure of its kind in US history. The biggest happened in 2004 in Moss Bluff, Texas, when an underground natural gas storage facility collapsed.

Depressingly, the researchers suggested that the environmental impact from the Aliso Canyon leak would be much more damaging than the Moss Bluff collapse because "an explosion and subsequent fire during the Moss Bluff release combusted most of the leaked CH₄, immediately forming CO₂.” Carbon dioxide sticks around in the atmosphere longer than methane does, but methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas in the short-term.

Scott Kelly will be able to eat all the fresh fruit he wants next week. (credit: NASA)

Scott Kelly is less than a week from coming home. When he climbs into a Soyuz spacecraft next Tuesday night, he will have completed a 340-day mission in space, the longest ever by any NASA astronaut.

But during a space-to-ground news conference with reporters on Wednesday, Kelly said he was feeling fine and still really enjoying his time in space. "I could go another year if I had to," Kelly said. "It would just depend on what I was doing and if it made sense. Although I do look forward to getting home next week."

Kelly will land Tuesday night at 11:25pm in Kazakhstan, likely about 140 kilometers southeast of Zhezkazgan. After medical tests there, he will return to Houston on a NASA airplane and undergo subsequent tests at crew quarters at the Johnson Space Center. And what will he do when released from there early Thursday morning? He's going to go home and jump in his pool, Kelly quipped.

Oh, hey, do you work here? Mickey could use a little extra cash. (credit: Loren Javier)

The Walt Disney Company has a reputation for lobbying hard on copyright issues. The 1998 copyright extension has even been dubbed the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” by activists like Lawrence Lessig that have worked to reform copyright laws.

This year, the company is turning to its employees to fund some of that battle. Disney CEO Bob Iger has sent a letter to the company’s employees, asking for them to open their hearts—and their wallets—to the company’s political action committee, DisneyPAC.

In the letter, which was provided to Ars by a Disney employee, Iger tells workers about his company's recent intellectual property victories, including stronger IP protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Supreme Court victory that destroyed Aereo, and continued vigilance about the "state of copyright law in the digital environment." It also mentions that Disney is seeking an opening to lower the corporate tax rate.

A Galveston Police Department sergeant in Texas has been indicted on misdemeanor accusations of unlawfully searching the vehicle of a video activist, according to a report in the Galveston County Daily News. The videographer was originally arrested in connection to filming police officers and their car license plates while standing outside the station.

Sgt. Archie Chapman, whose lawyer says he is innocent, faces up to 180 days in jail and a maximum $2,000 fine on allegations of criminal trespass. Phillip Turner, the 25-year-old activist in question, was arrested last November. He was handcuffed and later jailed for 16 hours on allegations of failing to identify himself to police officers. Eventually the charges were dropped.

Turner is a correspondent for photographyisnotacrime, a website largely dedicated to issues surrounding abuse and the right to film cops. A friend with him during the incident captured everything on film and uploaded it to YouTube.

That middle part is under a lot of potential fire. (credit: Riseup.net)

Ramon Lobato is senior research fellow at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. His book Geoblocking and Global Video Culture, coedited with James Meese, has recently been published by Institute of Network Cultures (free PDF). Thanks to Hadi Sohrabi, Jinying Li, and other contributors to the book for their insights on VPN regulation.

As info security expert Bruce Schneier and his Berkman Centre for Internet and Society colleagues pointed out in a report last week, there are now about 865 encryption-related products available globally. From free and paid VPNs to voice encryption tools, this market stretches far beyond the borders of the United States. Today, the encryption economy includes no fewer than 55 different countries across Europe, Latin America, the Asia-Pacific, and the Caribbean.

The sprawling ecology of software development creates an obvious problem for governments and security agencies seeking to monitor or contain privacy software. Free software and other distributed projects typically exist “on multiple servers, in multiple countries, simultaneously,” and companies selling anonymization software can relocate across borders with relative ease.