Category: Sci/Tech

Biosurveillance: Government to track your health as a matter of national security

By Darlene Storm

A very broad government biosurveillance plan that makes your health records a matter of “national security” showed up on my radar today. It opens the door leading to the government having near-real-time access to monitor your health. I apologize for only hearing about this, and bringing it to you at the last minute, since the deadline to submit comments is 5 PM Eastern time today, May 21. Of course the reason we might not have heard much about this “sneaky biosurveillance plan that will track American’s health records” is because the 50-page departmental draft (pdf) states, “Do not cite or quote.” Well that’s too damned bad, since this affects you, me, our kids, everyone in the United States!

It’s regarded as national security, meaning in the same way NSA surveillance was a secret until the Snowden leaks, you won’t even know how your health is being spied upon and shared with others. The 2015-2018 National Health Security Strategy (NHSS) (pdf) will keep track of and share information about not just sick people and sick animals, but even sick plants.

“The information collected by the government will be ‘all-encompassing’ and include ‘what our health status is, whether we exercise, how often we get a cold, or what kind of medications we’re taking,” according to the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF).

“This is not privacy.” Twila Brase, president and co-founder of CCHF, added (pdf), “Officials want a ‘near-real-time’ reporting requirement for electronic data systems. What is a ‘health threat’ or ‘incident’ that could jeopardize our ‘national health security?’ The Strategy says these could include terrorist activities, antibiotic resistance, climate change or subjects surrounding the economic environment. In other words, anything and everything could become a health threat by the government’s standards.”

Brase told CNCNews that the “NHSS proposal would allow the federal government to monitor an individual’s behavior before, during and after any government-defined health ‘incident.’ It’s very broad. It doesn’t seem to have any limits, except they say something about, you know, properly protecting the data. But from our perspective, if the government gets access to this kind of data, [and] is allowed to do research with the data…then our privacy has already been compromised. The government has already said that our data is their data for their purposes of national health security.”

There’s an old ACLU “joke” about ordering pizza in the future that’s meant to highlight the unpleasant “potential for centralized monitoring” and “the possibility of a dark future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready for access by the authorities whenever they want.” In that future, a person wouldn’t be allowed to order a pizza or soda that would be “unhealthy” — or they could order “unhealthy” pizza but would be charged a health penalty fee and must sign an insurance liability waiver — since the pizza employee has access to the person’s health records. We are already tracked via our cell phones, websites, purchases, license plate readers and now biosurveillance plans to track Americans’ health records. It’s sad that this “joke” from 2006 is very nearly our reality in 2014.

The draft proposal (pdf) claims NHSS will create “health situational awareness” made up from “many types of health-related and non-health-related data.” A graphic illustration of inputs to health situational awareness includes: non-health sources like informatics, supply chain, energy, environment, event driven, media, social determinants, transportation services, active intelligence and veterinary. Examples of health-related sources include: morbidity and mortality, lab/diagnostics, social service utilization, disease prevalence, health service utilization, public health investigation and response asset data. All of the above are merely part of the big picture, or “examples” of what data feeds into the “biosurveillance” portion of public health and medical situational awareness.

Put another way:

Situational awareness will involve collecting, aggregating, and processing data from both traditional and nontraditional sources (such as social media) and from various governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders, while ensuring that data from all sources are of high quality. Health situational awareness will include the ability to interpret data to create relevant, tailored information that decision-makers can use. Decision-makers will have the capability to visualize and manipulate data from many sources to create an operational picture suited to the specific situation and the decisions before them.

Brase warns that the “government’s biosurveillance plan is much more intrusive than the data collection currently being done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” It “talks about the need for the ‘examination of data from electronic medical records’ and calls for ‘cooperation among federal and non-federal stakeholders, including the scientific community and public and private healthcare providers … to achieve an efficient and reliable surveillance system.”

She added, “It’s very clear to us that really the government is moving toward real-time access, toward close collaboration of government and doctors for ready access to the electronic medical record and then to conduct research and analysis.”

“The scary truth is that this government surveillance program brings together several federal agencies—all who will be able to view, share, interpret and research the data collected through the system,” CCHF warns (pdf). “Cut through the jargon, and simply put, the government’s plan means that your medical records would be shared with government officials.”

CCHF urges you to speak out against the government’s biosurveillance plan to warehouse our health information. Or you can otherwise submit your public comments here.

—

Darlene Storm (not her real name) is a freelance writer with a background in information technology and information security. It seems wise to keep an eye on new hacks and holes, to know what is possible and how vulnerable you might be. Most security news is about insecurity, hacking, cybersecurity and even privacy threats, bordering on scary. But when security is done right, it’s a beautiful thing…sexy even. Security is sexy.

This is a weblog of Darlene Storm. The opinions expressed are those of Darlene Storm and may not represent those of Computerworld.

blogs.computerworld.com, May 21, 2014

May 22, 2014
Turkey Keen to Access Iranian Pharmaceutical Companies’ Technology

TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkish companies are seeking cooperation with leading Iranian pharmaceutical companies in a bid to utilize their valuable experiences in the sector, a Turkish official said.

The official, who coordinates Turkey’s pharmaceutical companies, said that the Turkish side is willing to develop cooperation with the Iranian side.

He further added that Turkish Abdi Ebrahim Company is resolved to transfer Iranian Sinagen Company’s know-how to Turkey to produce biological medicines.

First joint pharmaceutical project based on modern technology will be launched in Turkey, if an agreement to that effect be signed.

Iran and Turkey have in recent years increased their cooperation in all the various fields of economy, security, trade, education, energy and culture.

via Farsnews.

May 6, 2014
Laughing puts the brain in a meditative state

According to mind unleashed laughing could dramatically improve your health – and be as good for you as a deep state of meditation, researchers have found.

Studying the effects of the stress hormone cortisol on the brain, the researchers of the Loma Linda University in the U.S. decided to investigate whether laughter could affect its destructive impact on the body.

They found that laughter reduces the negative effects of cortisol and could be used as a therapy, offering a pleasant solution to the patients with hypertension, diabetes or heart problems.

“Things are simple: the less stress one has, the better his memory is,” says Dr. Lee Berk, who took part in the study.“Humor reduces the destructive action of hormones associated with stress such as cortisol, which acts on hippocampal neurons responsible for memory function, and reduces the levels of blood pressure, thus improving our mood” explains the researcher.

“Laughter stimulates the release of endorphins and dopamine in the brain, giving us a sense of satisfaction and reward. These beneficial neurochemical changes, in turn, make the immune system work better,” says Dr. Berk

As shown by the results of the study, laughter causes changes in the brain waves, specifically, gamma waves, which seems to boost memory retrieval processes.

“Laughter leads to the production of brainwave frequencies similar to those observed in people in a meditative state,” adds Dr. Berk.

As part of their study, the scientists showed funny videos lasting 20 minutes to a group of healthy elderly people and a group of elderly diabetic patients. Then they asked the volunteers to complete a questionnaire to assess their skills towards learning, memory retrieval and visual recognition. Finally, the results were compared to those of a control group who had the same age but did not watch the videos.

The researchers went on to measure the levels of cortisol both at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. As a result, they detected a significant reduction in levels of the stress hormone in both groups who had watched the videos and showed improvement in the ability to recall their memories compared to the control group.

Specifically, the largest decline in the levels of cortisol was detected in the case of the group of patients with diabetes, while the members of the group of healthy volunteers showed the highest score in the memory test.

“The findings of our study provide potential clinical benefits that could find application in particular in the case of older people,” says study author Dr. Gurinder Singh Bains.

“Despite the fact that elderly people experience memory problems related to their advanced age, pleasant complementary humor therapy could further help these patients,” concludes the expert.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna LeMind of www.learning-mind.com – Staff Writer For The Mind Unleashed

Hi, I like learning new things and sharing my knowledge with others! I post science, psychology, self improvement and other related topics. Add me to your circles on Google Plus or follow me on Twitter to stay updated on my new articles.

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Time Magazine

May 6, 2014
Turkey’s Twitter Shoot: Lessons Learned

Turkey’s Twitter Shoot: Lessons Learned

Network engineers can gain insight into resilience, indirection techniques like NAT, and Internet governance from Turkey officials’ none-too-successful attempt to shut down the popular messaging service.

In March, the nation of Turkey attempted to shut Twitter down within the country. There are several lessons network engineers should glean from Turkey’s efforts to shut down a single service, including lessons on resilience, indirection, and the interaction between Internet governance and the technology decisions engineers make when designing protocols and networks.

First — because of resilience — it’s become very difficult to turn off “one service” on the Internet. Turkey tried to shut down Twitter by blocking access to Twitter’s DNS records. Using DNS to block access to a service isn’t very effective, though; it’s easy enough to switch to a public DNS server, such as those run by Google, thus restoring any services rendered unreachable through this sort of blocking.

Let’s assume, though, that Turkey had decided to block the IP addresses of Twitter servers rather than the DNS records. Would this have worked? Probably not. Just about any service can be deployed across a number of different IP addresses, even changing IP addresses on a periodic basis to make it difficult to find and block each individual instance of the service. Putting the service behind a large-scale network address translator (NAT), would make it virtually impossible to block without blocking a large number of sites that are “innocent bystanders.”

Indirection such as NAT is often considered a very bad thing in network and protocol design and engineering. If we had a truly “transparent” Internet, where every person or service had to be identified before sending traffic, we’d certainly have a lot less spam. But without the indirections, Twitter service could not have been restored to people living in Turkey.

So the first lesson is this: To block any particular service, you almost have to block the entire Internet. IP networks are just too good at routing around blocked paths or dealing with mapping information being removed from one source. Resilience is a two-edged sword — individual services are much more reliable, but they’re also much harder to block or otherwise shut down.

Second, this level of resilience comes with another sort of cost in terms of security. DNS servers are often used to reflect or amplify denial-of-service attacks specifically because of the resilience built into the DNS system as a whole. Are we potentially facing another version of the CAP theorem? Just as a database cannot be made to be consistent, available, and partitionable all at the same time, maybe network protocols cannot be resilient, reliable, and secure all at the same time.

Finally, while we sit outside Turkey, smugly condemning an attempt to block Twitter, “free speech zones” are becoming increasingly common in the US. Free speech isn’t just about technology. It’s also about accepting that you’re not going to agree with anyone all of the time — and, in fact, you might just find what they say offensive. This is perhaps a little more of a personal lesson, but as engineers we need to realize that, while we can’t anticipate all the potential consequences of every decision we make, there is still some interaction between the technical world and the political one.

Engineering decisions have social outcomes as well as technical ones. It’s important to remain as neutral as possible, providing technology for a narrow set of requirements at hand, but it’s also important to get our heads out of the technology sandbox and try to come to terms with the real-world implications of what we’re building from time to time.

via Turkey’s Twitter Shoot: Lessons Learned – Network Computing.

May 1, 2014
Turkey Seeks Indigenous Rotor Production Ability

ANKARA — Turkey’s procurement planners and aerospace industry have officially launched efforts to provide the country’s thriving defense industry the ability to build an indigenous helicopter.

Turkey wants to build an indigenous helicopter to replace its UH-1 aircraft. (Wikipedia)

Turkey’s arms procurement agency, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM), said Feb. 14 that it had created a “Rotor Technology Center,” or DKTM in its Turkish acronym, which it tasked with researching for and earning the Turkish industry a technological readiness level.

DKTM will carry out research and development and train “scientifically competent personnel” with a view to Turkey’s indigenous helicopter program. SSM said the move came as part of a June contract it signed with the country’s aerospace specialist, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI).

“There will be several contracts and subcontracts attached to this program,” said an SSM official familiar with the program, referring to local and overseas defense companies.

A 14-page document details some of the project themes as part of DKTM’s future work under four topics: power transmission systems, rotor control, gas turbine engines and certification.

DKTM will operate at TAI’s premises at a science park on the campus of the Middle East Technical University here.

According to an official document that outlines its working principles, the rotor technology center will cooperate with universities as well as private and public entities.

DKTM will produce project review reports at least once every six months, and these reports will go to both TAI and SSM for further reviews.

Private and public entities can be contracted partners for research programs designed to earn rotor and related technologies.

The procurement official said the decision to launch an exclusive unit to research and work on rotor technology is an indication of Turkey’s intentions to design, develop and manufacture an indigenous helicopter.

“The final goal is to build a helicopter with as much local input as possible,” the official said.

Last summer, procurement authorities formalized their plans to build a Turkish helicopter when they tasked TAI with the job.

The program was launched in June 2010, and TAI submitted its bid to become the local prime contractor in October 2012. TAI’s 5-ton, twin-engine “light” helicopter would meet Turkish military requirements in the medium and long terms, but it will offer a civilian model for the commercial market.

The new Turkish helicopter would replace the country’s aging UH-1 “Huey,” but it also could meet Army training needs.

Officials say Turkey intends to use know-how and technology transfers that it would earn from a Sikorsky-led utility helicopter program.

In May, Turkey’s procurement officials said they came near to signing a US $3.5 billion contract with Sikorsky Aircraft for the co-production of scores of utility helicopters, but a contract has yet to be announced.

Turkey in 2011 selected Sikorsky as its partner company to lead production of the country’s next-generation utility helicopters. Sikorsky’s T-70, the Turkish version of its S-70 Black Hawk International, defeated Italian-British AgustaWestland for the contract.

The S-70 Black Hawk International is flown by the militaries of dozens of countries, including Turkey. AgustaWestland competed with its TUHP 149, the Turkish version of its newly developed AW149.

The first batch will total 109 utility helicopters, but with follow-on orders, more than 600 machines could be built at a cost of more than $20 billion, according to defense analysts. ■

February 28, 2014
GCHQ chief to step down by year’s end following Snowden leaks

Iain Lobban the director of GCHQ (Reuters/UK Parliament via REUTERS TV)

The head of GCHQ, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, will step down by year’s end, the Foreign Office said. Officials denied his departure was linked to public outrage over mass surveillance revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Iain Lobban, 53, has served as GCHQ’s director since June 2008. His departure was officially described as a long-considered move, but comes just a few weeks after he was summoned to answer MPs’ questions about surveillance operations in an unprecedented televised open session of the UK parliament’s intelligence and security committee, along with the heads of MI5 and MI6.

“Iain Lobban is doing an outstanding job as director of GCHQ,” a spokesperson said. “Today is simply about starting the process of ensuring we have a suitable successor in place before he moves on, planned at the end of the year.”

Officials dismissed suggestions his decision was influenced by revelations made by Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, whose leaks revealed details of a massive global surveillance network run by the NSA and other members of the so-called Five Eyes alliance – the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Despite accounting for the bulk of Britain’s three intelligence agencies’ combined budget of £2 billion, GCHQ had previously attracted far less public attention than MI5 or MI6.

It was damaging media revelations regarding wide-scale collaboration between GCHQ and the NSA that resulted in Lobban being called to appear before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee alongside the heads of MI5 and MI6 in November.

At the hearing, Lobban accused Snowden’s disclosures of seriously damaging Britain’s counter-terrorism efforts, saying extremists had discussed changing their communication methods following the revelations.

Critics, however, have accused GCHQ of working hand-in-hand with the NSA in massively intruding on the private communications of millions of citizens.

In June, the Guardian reported the NSA had secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic, and, by 2010, was able to boast the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes alliance.

According to media reports, the NSA and GCHQ had a particularly close relationship, sharing troves of data in what Snowden called “the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”

Around 850,000 NSA employees and contractors with top secret clearance had access to the GCHQ databases, allowing them to view and analyze information garnered from such subtly titled programs as ‘Mastering the Internet (MTI)’ and ‘Global Telecoms Exploitation (GTE).’

Lobban, who first joined GCHQ in 1983, insisted in November that GCHQ did not spend its time “listening to the telephone calls or reading the e-mails of the majority” of British citizens.

Sir Iain’s counterpart at the NSA, General Keith Alexander, alongside his deputy, John Inglis, are also stepping down later this year.

There is also an ongoing campaign pushing for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign for lying under oath by telling Congress the NSA did “not wittingly” collect data on hundreds of millions of Americans.

RT, 29.01.2014

January 30, 2014