from npr:
The National Security Agency has been working with Microsoft Corp. to help improve security measures for its new Windows 7 operating system, a senior NSA official said on Tuesday.
The confirmation of the NSA's role, which began during the development of the software, is a sign of the agency's deepening involvement with the private sector when it comes to building defenses against cyberattacks.
"Working in partnership with Microsoft and (the Department of Defense), NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user's ability to perform their everyday tasks," Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's Information Assurance Director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a statement prepared for a hearing held this morning in Washington. "All this was done in coordination with the product release, not months or years later in the product cycle."
The partnership between the NSA and Microsoft is not new...
Schaeffer said that the NSA is also working to engage other companies, including Apple, Sun, and RedHat, on security standards for their products. The agency also works with computer security firms such as Symantec, McAfee, and Intel.
from threat level:
Operators of the The Pirate Bay shuttered the site’s BitTorrent tracker on Tuesday, six years after it was founded.
Trackers - the servers that bootstrap each BitTorrent download - are no longer necessary with enhancements like DHT and PEX that allow peers to locate one another without accessing a central server, site operators wrote in the Bay’s blog.
“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down!” reads the announcement. “It’s the end of an era.”
“This is what we consider to be the future,” the Bay wrote. “Faster and more stability for the users because there is no central point to rely upon.”
The changeover, first reported by TorrentFreak, does not decommission Sweden’s The Pirate Bay, whose four co-founders face a year in prison for facilitating copyright infringement. The site continues to host and index torrent files in a more streamlined fashion.updates: it's alive! hollywood claims pirate bay tracker lives*swedish retailer lets go of pirate bay logo*
from the register:
Animal rights groups are apparently not pleased with NASA's plan to zap squirrel monkeys with repeated doses of radiation for science. The US space agency will expose between 18 to 28 of the moneys to low doses of radiation daily to better understand the effects of long-term exposure outside Earth's protective magnetic shield. American anti-animal testing group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, has launched a protest asking concerned citizens to tell NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to put a stop the experiment. "Radiation experiments involving nonhuman primates commonly involve restraint and other cruel procedures," the organization claims. "Monkeys, like other primates, are highly intelligent, have strong family bonds, demonstrate empathy, and, most importantly, suffer."
from newsweek:
Congress and civil libertarians have always been twitchy about involving the ultrasecretive National Security Agency—masters of electronic spying—more deeply in domestic security matters. Revelations that George W. Bush authorized the NSA (Motto: Never Say Anything) in the wake of 9/11 to expand warrantless electronic eavesdropping on Americans caused heartburn for both intelligence officials and private industry. Dragged into the controversy were phone companies and Internet service providers who took part in the program, although Congress later passed legislation that both tweaked and largely ratified Bush administration practices. (Congress gave retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits to private firms that collaborated.)
If anything, the Obama administration, citing the threats of computer hacking and cyberterrorism, is now moving to involve the NSA more deeply in domestic security issues. The growing role of the NSA—a Defense Department agency with thousands of military personnel—in domestic matters was on semi-public display on Friday. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visited a nondescript office complex in Arlington, Va., for the formal opening of a new high-tech command post called the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC, pronounced "en-kick"). The facility is officially described as “a 24-hour, DHS-led coordinated watch and warning center that will improve national efforts to address threats and incidents affecting the nation’s critical information technology and cyber infrastructure.”
The NSA’s official seal was displayed prominently on a big-screen graphic listing the center’s participants. The NSA’s director, Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, was among the dignitaries standing at Napolitano’s side as she formally cut a ribbon inaugurating the facility, which, without its spooky graphics and tight security cordon, would look like a large newsroom or trading floor equipped with rows of computer workstations.
potty-mouths charged for comcast hijack* 
