Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
Project Tempora: How the British GCHQ Helps the NSA Spy on US Citizens
Amidst all the media excitement over Ed Snowden’s dramatic flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, one story that slipped under the radar at the end of last week relates how the UK’s version of the NSA, the GCHQ, has been secretly tapping into the fiber optic systems running into and out of the British Isles. ...
Bitcoin Foundation Under Attack in California
Bitcoin has just found itself a new enemy in the shape of the California Department of Financial Institutions, which has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to the nonprofit Bitcoin Foundation, an organization that’s devoted to promoting best practices for the cryptocurrency. The California Department of Financial Institutions, which regulates banks and credit unions in the ...
Feeding the Patent Trolls: Here’s Their Side of the Story
When something as mundane as using Wi-Fi in a coffee shop or making an online purchase with your smartphone provokes a lawsuit, it’s clear that the legal system is seriously flawed. Unfortunately, that’s the way things have been in the US for a number of years now, but with any luck, it might be about ...
What’s Up With Mt. Gox? US Dollar Withdrawals Suspended for “Next Two Weeks”
As the world’s most popular Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox sees a huge amount of traffic with thousands of users each day transferring money into the exchange to buy the virtual currency, or else to sell their Bitcoin and withdraw US dollars or some other currency. Now, it’s claiming that the levels of traffic are so ...
How to Squeeze 1,000 Terabytes of Data onto a Single DVD
DVDs and Blu-ray discs probably don’t get as much respect as they deserve from technophiles, simply because the amount of data they can store in comparison to hard drives or flash is minuscule. But that could be about to change thanks to researchers at Swinburne University in Australia, who believe they’ve found a way to ...
Leaked FISA Documents Show The NSA Can Access US Data Without a Warrant
The Guardian has just released a new bunch of FISA documents relating to the NSA’s PRISM spying program, in particular regarding the circumstances under which it can can collect data on US citizens, and the measures it must take to “minimize” that data. Until now, the government has insisted that these rules help to ensure ...
Hackers Make Short Work of Photoshop CC: Get Your Pirate Copy Now!
Although Adobe has never explicitly stated that one of the motivating factors behind its decision to transform its Creative Cloud into a subscription-only cloud service was to curb software piracy, doing so was surely one of its intentions. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked. Fstoppers is reporting this morning that a hacked version of Photoshop CC is ...
Skype’s “Project Chess” Allegedly Lets NSA Snoop On Your Calls
Despite its repeated denials over PRISM, Skype has apparently been looking at ways it can facilitate government access to its VoIP calling service for at least five years. According to the New York Times, Skype has been running a clandestine program known as Project Chess since 2008, during the time when its chief backer was ...
LeaseWeb Hits Back At Kim Dotcom Over Megaupload Deletion
Kim Dotcom was acting up again yesterday, screaming blue murder over the fact that LeaseWeb, one of Megaupload’s former hosting providers, had apparently deleted “petabytes of data” belonging to users of the now defunct storage service. According to Dotcom, LeaseWeb’s decision amounted to the “largest data massacre in the history of the internet,” and was ...
Microsoft Raises The White Flag Over Xbox One Policies
Faced with a storm of protest from angry gamers, Microsoft has just announced a complete U-turn on its polices for its upcoming Xbox One console, meaning that game-sharing and offline game play will now be allowed. Writing on the Xbox Wire blog, Microsoft’s president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick said that the company had listened ...