ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 730
July 9, 2015
First Ever Private Launch Site for Orbital Rockets Could be in New Zealand
Photo credit:
Artist's impression of how the launch site will look on Kaitorete Spit, New Zealand. Rocket Lab.
New Zealand could be on its way to joining the space race and it’s doing so in style, becoming the first country to give liftoff to orbital rockets from a privately-owned launch site.
New Zealand-born and U.S.-based astronomy company Rocket Lab will construct the facility on Kaitorete Spit, located along the South Island of New Zealand.
Scientists Plan to Spy on Sharks Using Camera Traps
Photo credit:
Global FinPrint project.
Camera traps offer an extraordinary view into the secret lives of wild animals, and have given us an unparalleled glimpse into the world of many rare and endangered species. Now a team of marine biologists are starting to use them to spy on the creatures that live not in rainforests or on mountains, but beneath the waves.
Stunning Fossils Rewrite Evolutionary History of Life on Earth
Photo credit:
It looks like a fern, but is actually an extinct animal (probably a Furca arthropod) stunningly preserved from 477 million years ago. Peter Van Roy.
Moroccan deposits from the Ordovician era look like a sort of Lost World. Species thought to have died out 20 million years earlier in the Cambrian era sit next to others that were not believed to have evolved by the time the deposits were laid down.
Make Love, Not War: Fighting Badgers Age Faster
Photo credit:
Ian Rentoul/Shutterstock.
Are you a lover or a fighter? This question, it seems, has profound implications – especially if you’re a badger. A new study has found that male badgers that spend their younger years brawling age quicker compared to those that had a more relaxing early life.
Why Some Hosts Reject Parasitic Cuckoo Eggs While Others Don’t
Photo credit:
Parasitic cuckoo. francesco de marco/shutterstock.com
Brood parasites like cuckoos and cowbirds famously and sneakily lay their eggs into the nests of other birds. And while some host birds reject the foreign eggs, not all species do. Researchers investigating why some birds don’t evict alien eggs reveal that it depends on how steep the costs are to the hosts. The findings were published in Biology Letters this week.
Supreme Court Decision Aside, Lethal Injection Looks Increasingly Unsustainable
Filling an order for a lethal drug cocktail has been getting harder for quite some time. Four years ago companies in the European Union stopped shipping pharmaceuticals to the U.S. when they would be used for executions, leading to a shortage of sodium thiopental, a once-common general anesthetic. Then there were issues getting pentobarbital—a backup drug that is also a staple in many animal euthanasia mixes.
The drug at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case Glossip v. Gross, which the high court ruled on last month, was the sedative midazolam—a backup for the backup. The Court ruled that Oklahoma could continue using the drug but it left most big questions about capital punishment in the U.S. unanswered. No matter what the court said, however, it is only going to become harder to obtain drugs for use in executions, largely because the pharmaceutical companies that make them are increasingly refusing to sell them for that purpose.
By the time Glossip v. Gross reached the court there had already been several botched executions using the drug. In Ohio, where the execution drug replacement was not tested before use, convicted rapist and murderer Dennis McGuire struggled and gasped for breath and took more than 25 minutes to die (see Scientific American’s related editorial). The defendants in the case before the Supreme Court, however, were three prisoners from Oklahoma who are slated for execution. Their legal defense was that the sedative midazolam cannot be consistently relied on to make a prisoner unconscious before he receives the second and third drugs that are part of the three-drug lethal injection protocol in the state.
The Supreme Court justices rejected that argument. They concluded in their 5–4 decision that midazolam use is constitutional and stood by the decision of the lower court. The majority wrote that the petitioners “failed to establish that any risk of harm was substantial when compared to a known and available alternative method of execution.” They also noted that the lower court “did not commit clear error when it found that midazolam is likely to render a person unable to feel pain associated with administration of the paralytic agent and potassium chloride.” Therefore, Oklahoma can continue to use midazolam.
If it can find any. “The market has rejected the policy,” says Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. American pharmaceutical companies have been withdrawing their product from the market or taking steps to block them from being used for executions. That’s where the difficulty may be going forward. Following in the footsteps of the E.U., Akorn, an Illinois.-based maker of midazolam, already asked Oklahoma to return its drug for a full refund earlier this year because it “strongly objects to the use of its products in capital punishment.” It also instituted a policy barring direct shipments of its product to prisons.
Akorn, of course, is not the only maker of midazolam, but other pharmaceutical companies are taking similar actions. London-based Hikma Pharmaceuticals—a firm which also has U.S. operations—told Scientific American in a statement that it “strongly objects” to its drugs being used for executions and now takes several steps to block such use: It does not usually sell its products to prisons or correctional facilities at all, they said. The firm also requires its distributor and wholesale partners to sign an agreement saying it will not sell the products to any prison or department of corrections for “use in any manner that is inconsistent with approved product labeling.” Further, the company said that if it learns its products were used in unapproved ways, it would work to “aggressively reclaim such products in exchange for a full refund.”
There are other ways states can get these drugs, though. Compounding pharmacies—those that traditionally combine or mix drugs from scratch to meet the needs of individual patients—may fill that niche, especially if privacy laws protect them from the negative publicity that could come from being makers of lethal drug cocktails. Yet compounding drugs for this purpose may itself violate the law because “both state and federal laws require a patient-specific prescription before a pharmacy can provide a compounded drug,” notes Dale Baich, a lawyer who represents death row prisoners at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona Capital Habeas Unit. Because there is no unified oversight of compounding pharmacies, he says, there is also no way to guarantee that the drug is what it purports to be and is indeed safe and effective. The International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists declined to respond to specific questions from Scientific American but said in a statement, “IACP discourages its members from participating in the preparation, dispensing or distribution of compounded medications for use in legally authorized executions.”
The market is not the only remaining obstacle for capital punishment—there will probably be further court challenges, too. Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg signaled in their dissent to Glossip that they would like to reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty. “Rather than try to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one at a time, I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution,” they wrote. The two justices laid out a legal argument about why it may be considered cruel and unusual because of its unreliability, arbitrariness in application and unconscionably long delays that undermine the point of capital punishment. That may be the blueprint for a future challenge.
Why the FBI Wants “Special Access” to Your Smartphone
Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the federal government was increasingly concerned about the widespread use of data encryption in consumer technology, implying—although not explicitly demanding—that tech companies give law enforcement easier access to cryptographically scrambled customer data. Comey’s testimony came one day after some of the world’s top cybersecurity experts and computer scientists issued a report arguing that the government’s call for special access to encrypted information is technically unfeasible and unworkably vague. Law enforcement officials need to get specific about what they want, the report’s authors argued, instead of simply waving their hands and hoping for a technological unicorn that gives them on-demand access to personal information while also protecting user privacy and securing data.
And this is where the debate gets complicated. Here’s what each side wants and what might happen next:
What is FBI director Comey asking for?
Comey called for a “front-door” approach to customer data access in an October 2014 speech but he was unclear about how this might work outside of a nebulous call for tech companies to build “intercept solutions” into their products. National Security Agency (NSA) Director Michael Rogers proposed something a bit more concrete in April when he suggested that technology companies be required to create a digital key that could open any smartphone or other locked device, but dividing that key into pieces so it could not be used unilaterally. The Center for Democracy & Technology quickly shot down the split-key proposal as impractical.
In his written statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey was careful to avoid asking companies to allow surreptitious “backdoor” access to customer data and communications. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 indicated that his former agency had done this, for example, by deliberately weakening encryption standards issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The backlash against the government’s alleged tampering with encryption standards and government demands for customer data has created a growing rift between Silicon Valley companies and Washington, D.C.
Why does the government say it should have this capability?
Federal law enforcement officials are concerned that criminals and terrorists will go “dark” by hiding their communications in encrypted e-mails and smartphones. Newer versions of the Apple iOS and Google Android mobile operating systems have emphasized encryption, to the point where company executives have said they would be unable to unlock customer data for law enforcement even if ordered to do so. “With sophisticated encryption, there might be no solution [for law enforcement], leaving the government at a dead end—all in the name of privacy and network security,” Comey said in October. Others in law enforcement have taken even more extreme positions. “Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” John Escalante, chief of detectives for the Chicago Police Department, told The Washington Post in September.
New York City District Attorney (NYCDA) Cyrus Vance, who likewise testified before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, was more specific in his objection to device encryption. In his written testimony, he stated that asking his office to investigate the more than 100,000 criminal cases they handle each year without smartphone data is to “fight crime with one hand tied behind our backs.” Following the hearing, Wired reported that the NYCDA’s office has since September encountered 74 iPhones whose full-disk encryption locked out a law enforcement investigation. Vance later singled out Apple during his testimony for having a double standard with regard to its encryption policy. The company allows its customers to have sole possession of the decryption key for gadgets running iOS 8. Meanwhile, Apple does have the ability to decrypt customer data stored in the company’s iCloud storage service if ordered to do so.
The FBI does need to intercept communications from time to time. Doesn’t Comey have a point?
Security experts have criticized law enforcement officials for overstating the need for access. “It's all bluster,” security expert Bruce Schneier wrote on his blog in October. Schneier, one of 15 co-authors of the new report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), added, “Of the 3,576 major offenses for which warrants were granted for communications interception in 2013, exactly one involved kidnapping. And, more importantly, there's no evidence that encryption hampers criminal investigations in any serious way. In 2013 encryption foiled the police nine times, up from four in 2012—and the investigations proceeded in some other way.”
What technical objections do security experts have to “special access”?
CSAIL issued its 34-page report yesterday—you can find it here. It highlights several reasons why special access would create more problems than it would solve. The security researchers interpret Comey’s comments to mean tech companies should create a cryptographic key escrow—in other words, a stored digital skeleton key—that law enforcement could use to unlock encrypted information for use in criminal or terrorism investigations. But any cryptographic key created for law enforcement would become a major target for hackers, would be difficult to secure and would discourage newer security practices such as “forward secrecy,” in which decryption keys are deleted immediately after use and new keys are created for each subsequent transaction. A small but growing number of sites—including Google, Twitter, the Wikimedia Foundation and Facebook—have over the past few years begun using forward secrecy to secure transactions and data.
Is there any way to create special access that would make everyone happy?
The authors of the report argue that any effort to create front doors for law enforcement would also make software and devices much more complex, difficult to secure and expensive for tech companies to maintain.
What is the government’s track record for protecting sensitive data?
Not good. Last year alone the government reported successful hacks into unclassified White House, State and Defense department e-mail systems. The security researchers, led by Daniel Weitzner, director of M.I.T.’s Cybersecurity and Internet Policy Research Initiative and a former deputy chief technology officer at the White House, specifically cite the recent hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to illustrate the harm that can arise when many organizations entrust private information to a single institution for safekeeping. In the case of OPM, numerous federal agencies lost sensitive data because the office had insecure infrastructure.
Is there any precedent for what the government is asking to do?
The current debate must seem like déjà vu for many of the report’s authors, many of whom in 1997 opposed a Clinton administration proposal that sought to require information and communication services to engineer their products to guarantee law enforcement access to all data. The White House ultimately abandoned its push to have tech companies install what came to be known as the Clipper chip. The plan behind Clipper was to have all encryption systems retain a copy of keys necessary to decrypt information entrusted to a third party who would turn over the keys to law enforcement on proper legal authorization.
What was the case against Clipper?
The researchers at the time determined it was not possible to create the technology that Clipper proposed—a master key the government could use to access large numbers of encrypted communications. Nor was there any consensus over who would serve as the trusted third-party that would hand over the master key when the government secured a court order to use it.
What happens next?
The FBI’s Comey insisted Wednesday he was not asking to expand the government’s surveillance authority; rather, his goal was to ensure that law enforcement can continue to gather electronic information and evidence from emerging technologies when needed. The security researchers say Comey and his colleagues should be as specific as possible about what they need and then engage cybersecurity experts and lawmakers to come up with an approach that takes into account both data security and user privacy. Now that both sides have spoken publicly, we will probably see some direct dialogue between them.
July 8, 2015
New Super-Hubble Telescope Could Find out if we are Alone in the Universe
Photo credit:
The proposed High-Definition Space Telescope would dwarf both Hubble and the JWST. C. Godfrey/STScI.
When it comes to astronomy, bigger is almost always better.
Although the iconic Hubble Space Telescope is set to be eclipsed by a telescope three times its size in 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have already proposed an even more impressive space observatory that would put both of them to shame. And tantalizingly, it could reveal how rare or common life is in the Universe.
Ignorance is bliss?
Is ignorance bliss? Real talk. Just wanted to have a conversation with you all about stuff that’s been on my mind. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
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July 7, 2015
Here’s What The Night Sky Would Look Like If We Could See Every Asteroid
Photo credit:
Mopic/Shutterstock
Our solar system is littered with millions of asteroids, yet only the biggest ones heading straight toward us make headline news.
"We're essentially flying around the sun through this population of asteroids with our eyes closed," says astronomer and animator Scott Manley in his latest video.
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