USA to equip military, government officials with Androids

SophosLabs: The United States, which currently forbids government workers or soldiers to use smartphones to send classified messages, is preparing a modified version of Google’s Android operating system that will meet its security certifications. According to CNN, the army has been testing touchscreen devices at U.S. bases for almost two years. Forty phones were sent to soldiers overseas last year, and another 50 phones and 75 tablets are scheduled to ship to soldiers in March....

February 6, 2012 · 4 min · 718 words

CIA launches W.T.F. (WikiLeaks Task Force)

Washington Post: The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks. Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it’s mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F. The irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations....

December 23, 2010 · 4 min · 674 words

Chinese hackers ‘slurped 50 MB of US gov email'

The Register: Windows source code tapped, say WikiLeaked docs The Chinese government may have used its access to Microsoft source code to develop attacks that exploited weaknesses in the Windows operating system, according to a US diplomatic memo recently published by WikiLeaks. The June 29, 2009 diplomatic cable claims that a Chinese security firm with close ties to the People’s Republic of China, got access to the Windows source under a 2003 agreement designed to help companies improve the security of the Microsoft operating system....

December 7, 2010 · 4 min · 647 words

Microsoft Asked to Make a Federal Budget Video Game

The Obama administration’s Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission has been working with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer to make a computer game about managing the United States federal budget and deficit, USA Today reports. President Obama appointed Erskine Bowles and Alan K. Simpson to lead an 18-person, bi-partisan commission to generate ideas for dealing with the nation’s rising deficit and other fiscal challenges. The game is just a footnote amid the commission’s broader objectives, of course, but it’s actually not a bad idea....

April 17, 2010 · 2 min · 237 words

Norway Uses iPad to Run the Government During Icelandic Volcano

Thousands of travelers are stranded throughout Europe as ash continues to rain down from an erupting volcano in Iceland this week. Among them is Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who, according to his press secretary, is “running the Norwegian government from the United States via his new iPad.” CNN reports that the Norwegian prime minister was in New York this week for President Obama’s nuclear summit and has been left stranded on American soil thanks to the widespread closure of most of European airspace....

April 17, 2010 · 1 min · 178 words