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The UK and US governments are working on an agreement that would allow MI5 and other intelligence agencies to serve orders on US companies like Google and Facebook for live intercepts of conversations if they involve only British citizens. According to a report in The Washington Post, the UK would also be able to request stored data, such as e-mails. The agreement would be reciprocal, allowing the US to request similar data about Americans from UK companies.

If concluded, the agreement would help to resolve the difficult situation for US Internet companies, which are increasingly under pressure from the UK government to provide intercepts or stored data for domestic investigations of terrorist and criminal activities, but forbidden from doing so by US laws.

Currently, the only mechanism for obtaining this kind of information is through a mutual legal assistance treaty. As The Washington Post explains, this involves the UK making "a formal diplomatic request for the data and the Justice Department then seeks a court order on its behalf—a process that is said to take an average of 10 months." The proposed system would enable the UK and US governments to obtain intercepts through official channels more easily and more speedily. There is ample evidence that many other, more informal channels exist for exchanging information, but it may be that both governments would like to put things on a firmer legal basis.

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With new fighters that are built for stealth, the Air Force needs something else to carry all the firepower for them: arsenal planes. (credit: Dan Stijovich @ Flickr)

The US Air Force has a problem. While it bets its future on the stealth of the F-22 and F-35 fighters, that stealth has come at a cost: reduced weapon loads. To be stealthy, the aircraft both have to carry all of their weapons in internal bays, significantly limiting how many bombs and missiles they can carry to strike at targets on the surface and defend themselves from other fighters.

Without mounting weapons on external hard points on its wings—and creating a much bigger radar target as a consequence—the F-22 can carry just two air-to-air missiles and two JDAM bombs—though the new, smaller Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) allows it to carry eight bombs and two air-to-air missiles in the same space. The Air Force's F-35A fighters delivered so far aren't cleared for combat, and the first wave of F-35s being delivered to the Marine Corps (Block 2B) are restricted to two bombs and two air-to-air missiles because the software for more weapons hasn't been finished.

So, what are these multimillion-dollar aircraft supposed to do once they've emptied their weapon bays? That is where the Air Force's research and development plans, detailed in the 2017 Defense Department budget request being sent to Congress this month, come in: the Air Force wants to develop an arsenal plane. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter described the arsenal plane as "a flying launch pad for all sorts of different conventional payloads. In practice, the arsenal plane will function as a very large airborne magazine, networked to 5th-generation aircraft that act as forward sensor and targeting nodes.”

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In a ‘pirate’ world consumed by web-streaming, BitTorrent and software such as Popcorn Time, there’s no doubt that desktop users are spoiled for choice.

However, for users of the Android system there is a seriously powerful beast that’s been gaining traction for some time now, one that not only downloads from both BitTorrent networks and direct sources but also presents the results in a tidy Netflix-style interface.

While Showbox hasn’t been endlessly reported in the media in the way that Popcorn Time has, the software is already in use on hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of tablet and cellphone devices. And, since it also runs on Windows emulators such as Bluestacks, it’s likely that thousands of desktop installations exist too.

But more recently Showbox has become a much-installed package on countless set-top devices, including but not limited to Amazon’s Fire Stick, bringing all the latest movies and TV shows into the home with a minimum of fuss. Since Showbox can stream from non-P2P sources too (it defaults to that, in fact), it offers a decent level of anonymity too. All that has led to a boost in popularity on a similar curve to that enjoyed by Popcorn Time.

With all the latest movies and TV shows at hand to either stream or download (with a choice of qualities and subtitles thrown in for good measure) Showbox is definitely on the radars of the Hollywood studios. But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, little appears to have been done about the software. Certainly, there has been no Popcorn Time legal response to speak of.

Whether that has played a part in the software’s latest development is unclear but during the past few days Showbox added a controversial new feature that’s likely to infuriate not only Hollywood but also the world’s major record labels. The latest version (v4.51) now has the ability to stream and download music.

Present for now only when run on a cellphone device, Showbox’s music menu is illustrated on the left of the image below. A small sample of its popular music section appears on the right.

Without a detailed network analysis (we’ll leave that to others) it’s unclear where Showbox is pulling content from. However, it’s certainly possible that Russian social network vKontakte is playing a part as it has previously with movies and TV shows.

Either way, the catalog of content appears to be pretty deep, featuring both fresh content and plenty of classics from the archives. Its built-in media player is an obvious inclusion and users will be pleased by the addition of a playlist creator and a means to share content with friends.

While Showbox is certainly not available from Google Play or Amazon (it must be sideloaded by the user) the eagle-eyed will have noticed the advert for Amazon in one of the images above. In fact, advertising for mainstream products and services appears regularly when viewing Showbox, often as pre-run videos when running the tablet version, for example.

In fact this morning when carrying out tests it appears that the South African government was dropping a few coins in the collection box, with adverts for tourists to come and enjoy a holiday in the country. Shortly after the British government was contributing too, with a 30 second video slot recruiting for the armed services.

Showbox is certainly a powerhouse when it comes to streaming video content and now that it’s entered the music field too, there are few (if any) applications that can compete with it. The music section is lacking the finesse of Spotify though, but the developers reiterate the service is only in beta so there could be more to come.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.