New Apple devices include default kill switch

WASHINGTON - New Apple Inc phones include a theft deterrent system that enables users to lock their devices and wipe them clean of data if stolen, a victory for regulators who have long pushed the telecommunications industry to do more to stem theft.
The tool, known as a kill switch, will be standard on Apple's new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices and can be installed on previous models of iPhones starting Wednesday, according to an announcement from the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Schneiderman has long fought alongside New York District Attorney George Gascón to convince device manufacturers to include the kill switch as a default setting on their devices.
"This is a game changer,” said Gascón. "This is a major development that will change behavior on the street and eventually turn around this violent epidemic."
The announcement marks the first time a kill switch is present as a default option on the iPhone.
In April, Apple was among 10 device makers to sign a voluntary agreement to make the feature available on new smartphones.
In 2012, 1.6 million Americans were victimized for their smartphones, according to Schneiderman's office.

Facebook Wants To Know If I Trust It

Last week, my email address and a very old email password appeared on a list of about five million compromised accounts that was leaked onto a Russian Bitcoin forum. I hadn't used that password in ages, and thought I was safe. As it turns outs, I was wrong.
My least-often used, but largest social media account, Facebook, still used this password. Some delightful resident of Indonesia decided to log into my account with it, but luckily, the security guards over at Facebook stopped the attempt and asked me to reset my password right away, via email. They also pressured me into activating two-step verification, which I am a big fan of, but had not turned on as I log into my Facebook account so infrequently.
I felt pretty good about Facebook. For a couple days at least.
Today, I decided to log back in and torture myself with some engagement photos or cat videos, and Facebook asked me if I'd like to take a survey. I love surveys so I took Facebook up on their offer:
Well, you did protect me from being hacked by a rogue Indonesian, so, sure, I am satisfied.
We don't know one another that well, Facebook. We had a thing back in high school and we were really close during prom, but we haven't talked much since then. I don't know you like that anymore; perhaps I never did.
I decided to dig a little deeper, so as not to dismiss a potentially caring and deep relationship with Facebook so quickly. I looked into which words Twitter thinks I use most often versus the words Facebook thinks I use most often.Clearly, I share the stories I write for The Wire across both platforms (link, written, interviews), but there's also a big difference in the kind of stories I share on Twitter (dolphin, sea, putin, kiev) and Facebook (death, police, interviews, ferguson.) Twitter is reserved for more light-hearted stories that I want to discuss with random Internet folk, whereas Facebook is for more serious matters that I prefer to discuss with friends. Facebook is also a bit outdated — I have written about Kiev more recently than about police officers or Ferguson.   Next, I looked at the ads I get on both networks. Facebook is trying to sell me shoes, phone cases ,and dresses. I don't actively post about any of those, but they are all generic to what my demographic is: 21-29, female, in a metropolitan city. I do like all of those things, but I am not compelled to click on any of their ads. Twitter, on the other hand, has me a little more figured out. A quick scroll down my timeline shows ads for a financial portfolio building firm I was researching for a story and Fanta, which I happen to love. It also makes sense, as I often tweet about my affection for Diet Coke.   With this method, I determined that Facebook, you certainly care about the ad dollars I can produce for you, and you care a lot about figuring out who I am, but you don't really know me . You care about the version of my profile that is most profitable. 
My first reaction is to click "Neither agree nor disagree." Sure, Facebook makes me feel creeped on and weird, but it hasn't actively violated my trust. It hasn't actively or consistently done anything to show it was trustworthy, either, besides this one time it protected my account from a hacker. Oh, right. That's why I got this survey at all. Because of that one hack that made me feel pretty okay about Facebook and want to start using it again. Facebook is skewing their own results with the timing of this survey. Of course their users are more likely to feel trusting of them right after the company protected them from a hack.
I decided to reach out to Facebook to learn a bit more about this strange timing and exactly what their plans were with my results. Would they show up in an investor report, used to prove to a board far more important than little old me that their mega company was very, very trustworthy? Would they become public? Well, I learned... absolutely nothing. I have no idea where that data is doing, or who inside (or outside) Facebook would be using it.
Notably, there is also no back button or the ability to change your answers:
So once you have said (well, multiple choice selected) your piece, Facebook wouldn't like to hear an updated opinion or second thought.
When the Washington Post's Brian Fung took a similar survey last year, Facebook told him, "We are constantly working to improve our service and getting regular feedback from the people who use it is an invaluable part of the process."
"Improve our service" could certainly mean "use this information in an internal investor report," meant to soothe those most invested in the company about their ability to be trustworthy. Perhaps when the public is allowed to see what they have to say about Facebook, then I would trust Facebook.
My Facebook account is now secure from whoever was in Indonesia and whoever else was scanning that list of five million hacked accounts, sure. I thank you for that Facebook, but I don't really think my account is secure from the prying eyes of your ad sales department.

NYPD Gets Training on How to Gain Followers and Influence on Twitter

For a department that's still trying to figure out how to recover from the #MyNYPD debacle, the New York Police Department should be commended on their perseverance to learn the Twitterverse — and now they're doing it in the classroom with course materials and everything.
The New York Post got its hands on the NYPD's new social media handbook which, among other things, coaches officers to use humor to gain followers and interest.
“Tasteful humor is good,” it says.

It goes on to offer tips on how to make people LOL in 140 characters or less, citing real tweets from San Francisco cops as examples.
One reads: “Officers just arrested a naked man in the bison paddock in GG [Golden Gate] Park. The bison seemed unimpressed.”
By contrast, it tells cops not to post boring, jargon-filled tweets, such as, “Officers responded to an apartment on the 2500 block of Turk St. regarding a burglary.”
Top brass is expected to tweet at least four time a day — and not everybody is happy about the additional requirements. “It’s a lot more work … Now I have to worry about social media on top of everything else I have to do,” one police source told the Post.
If they can get it right, police departments report that social media definitely helps them in their work and in building good relations with their community.A 2013 social media survey from the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that 96 percent of police departments use social media in some capacity, 80 percent say it has helped them solve crimes, and 73 percent of agencies said it helped improve police-community relationships in their jurisdiction.

North Korea fires three short-range rockets as pope visits South Korea

SEOUL - North Korea fired three short-range rockets off its east coast on Thursday, South Korea's Ministry of Defense said, shortly before Pope Francis arrived in Seoul on his first visit to Asia.
The rockets were fired from multiple launchers in the North Korean port city of Wonsan and traveled 220 km (135 miles) before landing in waters east of the Korean peninsula, a defense ministry official said.
The last rocket was fired 35 minutes before Pope Francis was due to arrive at an air base in Seoul, where the pontiff started a five-day visit to South Korea.
The launches came ahead of U.S.-South Korean military exercises scheduled to start on Monday. Seoul and Washington say the exercises are defensive in nature but North Korea regularly protests against the drills, which it sees as a rehearsal for war.
North Korea last fired short-range rockets in late July but has since said repeatedly that the launches are specifically designed as counter measures against those drills.
"Given that the U.S. and the puppet forces of South Korea continue staging nuclear war exercises against us in particular, we will take countermeasures for self-defense which will include missile launches, nuclear tests and all other programs," a statement carried by North Korean state media last Friday said.
Pyongyang is under heavy U.N. and U.S. sanctions related to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Short-range rockets do not defy the ban but Pyongyang has in recent months changed its propaganda style to include photographs of leader Kim Jong Un personally supervising the launches.

11 objects spotted in search for MH370

Chinese and Australian ships are enroute to the new search area off the coast of Perth to track down debris thought to be part of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion spotted 11 white rectangular objects in the Indian Ocean.
The cluster of objects is sitting just below the surface about 1600 kilometres west of Perth, New Zealand Air Vice-Marshal Kevin Short told media.
"It's hard to identify because all you're seeing is this one-metre rectangular piece of material."
The 11 objects were within five metres of each other and there were objects up to a couple of hundred miles away as well, he said.
"There seems to be patches of these objects and that's not unexpected, looking at how long the aircraft's been missing.
"If they're from that aircraft it's not unusual to have them separated by hundreds of miles."
The plane carrying 239 people, including six Australians and two New Zealanders, disappeared on March 8.
The objects had been marked with a sonar buoy and four ships would be in the area to retrieve them, Air Vice-Marshal Short said.
The objects would be photographed, with the images sent to investigators, then transported to Perth for further investigation, he said.
The search area was shifted 1000 kilometres north-east after international air crash investigators had their ”most credible lead” yet.
The new area was calculated after analysis of radar data indicated the aircraft was travelling faster than previously thought, meaning it would have used its fuel more quickly and travelled less distance.
At 319,000 square kilometres, the new search area revealed is massive, almost the same size as the Malaysian land mass and roughly 50 per cent larger than Victoria.
Five aircraft also spotted coloured objects in the new search area.
Photographs of the objects were taken and were to be assessed, while a Chinese ship in the new search area was directed towards the debris.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority emergency response manager John Young said all search planes and ships had been moved to the new zone.
"We have moved on from those search areas to the newest credible lead."
Any wreckage found would be handed over to Malaysian authorities.
The findings came with a warning from Malaysia Airlines of the effect that speculation about the flight's fate could have on the families.
"Whilst we understand that there will inevitably be speculation during this period, we do ask people to bear in mind the effect this has on the families of all those on board," the airline's group chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.
"Their anguish and distress increases with each passing day, with each fresh rumour, and with each false or misleading report."
Mr Yahya said preparations were underway for family members of passengers and crew to be taken to Perth, should physical wreckage be found.

Police officer shot at Brampton courthouse

A police officer has been wounded after a shooter opened fire in the Brampton courthouse.
The shooter has also been shot, the Star has confirmed.
Peel EMS confirmed they are transferring one patient to hospital from the courthouse.
Two lawyers say they have been locked down inside the sprawling, multi-floor courthouse.
It’s not clear where the shooting took place inside the courthouse.
Lawyer Corey Nishio told the Star Friday morning he was locked in a courtroom on the second floor of the courthouse.
He said he didn’t hear any shots fired, but said people in his courtroom are hearing that three or four shots were fired near the entrance of the courthouse and that the victim may have been an officer who was handling security.
Criminal defence lawyer Will Jaksa told the Star via Twitter while on lockdown that people in the hallways on the second floor of the courthouse were “scrambling” into rooms on that floor. He was locked down in courtroom 202

“Cops bravely went running towards the gunshots,” Jaksa wrote.
Court staff were being updated by administration and the latest unconfirmed update was that “someone came into the building shooting . . . An officer was taken away by ambulance,” he said.
Peel police were not immediately available to confirm this information.
The Star’s Kenyon Wallace and Rachel Mendleson are inside the courthouse and are also on lockdown. They saw a police officer in uniform taken to an ambulance out the front entrance.
One witness told the Star she saw a man lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
A police tactical team is on scene, along with more than a dozen police cruisers that have blocked and three ambulances.

U.N. nuclear agency may press Iran on rare isotope in probe

VIENNA - The U.N. nuclear watchdog says it wants Iran to clarify past production of small amounts of a rare radioactive material that can help trigger an atomic bomb explosion, but which also has non-military uses.
The comment about polonium by U.N. atomic agency chief Yukiya Amano at a weekend security conference in Munich suggested the issue may be raised at talks between his experts and Iranian officials on February 8.
It also signaled his determination to get to the bottom of suspicions that Iran may have worked on designing a nuclear warhead, even as world powers and Tehran pursue broader diplomacy to settle a decade-old dispute over its atomic aims.
The silvery-grey soft metal polonium gained notoriety eight years ago in the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, in London. The interest of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based U.N. agency, stems from its potential role in atomic arms.
"The separation of polonium-210, in conjunction with beryllium, can be part of a catalyst for a nuclear chain reaction," the Arms Control Association, a U.S. research and advocacy group, said on its web site.
It was not immediately clear why Amano would bring up polonium-210 now. The IAEA had said in a report as far back as 2008 it had discussed the substance and Iran had answered its questions about it.
Back then, it cited Iran as saying that some of its scientists had proposed a research project on the production of the material in the 1980s but that the chemist working on it left the country before its completion and it was aborted.
The IAEA said in 2008 it had concluded that the Iranian explanations were consistent with its own findings: "The agency considers this question no longer outstanding at this stage."
Robert Kelley, a former senior IAEA official, said the matter had been settled at the time and that it was a question of "minor experiments that weren't part of any organized programme".
Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank said one possibility was that the IAEA had received new intelligence information regarding polonium-210. Hibbs said it had been his understanding that the issue was not seen as urgent and essential by the U.N. agency.
IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said it was not a new issue, but an example of one "that the agency is keeping an eye on and that would benefit from further clarification." Amano referred to it in response to an audience question, Tudor added.
An IAEA investigation into Iran's behavior is running in parallel with new measures to curb Iran's nuclear programme under a deal negotiated with world powers in November in return for limited easing of U.S. and European Union sanctions.
The big powers' interim agreement focused mainly on preventing Tehran obtaining nuclear fissile material to assemble a future bomb, rather than on the question of whether Iran sought atom bomb technology in the past.
The U.N. body has made clear it wants Iran to start addressing long-standing allegations that it may have researched how to make a nuclear bomb, a charge it denies.
Amano's statement offered a hint that polonium-210 may be among topics it wants to discuss at the February 8 meeting: "Polonium can be used for civil purposes like nuclear batteries, but can also be used for a neutron source for nuclear weapons. We would like to clarify this issue too," he said.
A U.S. think-tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), said Iran had admitted to producing small amounts of polonium-210 in a Tehran research reactor in the early 1990s.
"Iran claims that the polonium was produced as part of a study of the production of neutron sources for use in radioisotope thermoelectric generators and not for use in a nuclear weapons neutron initiator," it added on its web site.
Often strained in the past, ties between Iran and the IAEA have improved since last year's election of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as new Iranian president on a platform to ease Tehran's international isolation.
The IAEA's investigation into what it calls the possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme is separate from, though still closely linked to, the more wide-ranging negotiations between Tehran and the six major states - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.
Under an agreement signed just weeks before the powers reached their own agreement to cap Iran's nuclear activity, the U.N. agency has already visited a heavy water production plant and a uranium mine in Iran. However, those first steps do not go to the heart of the IAEA's investigation.
Western diplomats say the U.N. body's investigation will be taken into account during talks, due to start on February 18, between Iran and the major powers on a long-term agreement to scale back Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.

Man 'acting violently' on flight to Vancouver arrested

A man on an international flight from China was arrested Sunday morning after the plane landed at Vancouver International Airport.
Richmond RCMP said a pilot had reported at about 6:30 a.m. PT that a passenger was "acting violently" on the China Southern Airlines flight, and had to be restrained.
A passenger on that plane, Tanya Truong, told CBC News that the man — who seemed to be in his 30s and may have had an Australian accent — was behaving strangely even before they all boarded the plane at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.
"When we were lining up to get on to the flight from Guangzhou, we had already noticed him," she said. "He appeared slightly rowdier than the rest."
But the trouble began about halfway through the 11½-hour flight, she said.
"Everyone was asleep and the lights were turned off in the plane, and he ran down the aisles, screaming and yelling at someone and alarming everyone and waking everyone one up.
"There were several flight attendants trailing him and, I think, trying to get him to calm down.
"He was just screaming a lot of swear words at one of his family members," she said.
Some passengers who had been sitting near him later told Truong that they suspected he had been intoxicated, and overheard flight attendants telling him to stop drinking.
After about an hour or two of the flight attendants keeping watch on him in the back of the plane, first in the kitchen area and then in the back row seated with one of the flight attendants, things apparently got worse.
"Other flight members had to get involved," Truong said.
"He kept trying to provoke the flight attendant," she said. "I think this definitely alarmed a lot of people because this was really loud, and it looks like he was trying to harm the flight attendant, so he had to be taken down."
"Several people had to, kind of like, sit on top of him, and then he was handcuffed," she said.
The flight attendants announced that because the passenger has compromised the safety of the other passengers, he would be taken into police custody when the plane landed.
Richmond RCMP arrested the passenger just after 9:30 a.m. PT at Vancouver International Airport.
Cpl. Stephanie Ashton said he was taken into custody and is being held at the Richmond RCMP Detachment until he appears in court on Monday.
Ashton said "it is unknown where the man originates from or the purpose of his travel to Canada."
Truong said some of the passengers who spoke with the man's family members on the flight said the family had talked about being on their way to go to Whistler to snowboard.