Science has found a way, according to MSNBC, to convert the sugars in a cockroaches belly into electricity through a fuel cell. Once fuel cells are shrunk enough to be non-invasive to cockroaches, they can be implanted to power sensors or recording devices.

Daniel Scherson, a chemist at Case Western Reserve University, explains how the nightmare fuel will be powered. A rechargeable battery is inserted alongside a biofuel cell that would store the small amount of energy it generates.

“If you want to be futuristic, one may use the energy stored to try to control the neurological system of the cockroach and then you might be able to (control) the cockroach (with) a joystick,” Scherson told MSNBC.

The alarming research points to a future of cockroach spies. Controllable cockroaches scurrying around being not only disgusting, but also spy equipment from the CIA.

Looking deeper into the research, the scientists reveal that a cockroach’s diet is the main power source behind the electricity it can generate. This makes other forms of harnessing electricity, such as through movement, obsolete.

The fuel cell developed by the team uses a series of reactions by enzymes to break down the sugar into electricity. The first enzyme breaks down the sugar produced by the cockroach into two simpler sugars. The second enzyme oxidizes the two simple sugars. This releases electrons that are funneled together to electrodes.

The team tested it by inserting prototype electrodes into the belly of a female cockroach. The biofeul cell 0.2 volts of electricity. While not a huge amount, it’s the first baby step to the creation of robot cockroach monsters.

The scientists have noble goals for now with this new found technology. They hope to equip social insects like bees or ants with sensors that can detect dangerous chemicals.

The battery operating at 0.2 volts is enough to send a message by a few inches. Theoretically, you could line up a bunch of ants and play a wicked game of telephone to spy on potential criminals.

This does bring into question what science will do once they develop true robot cockroaches or ants that can’t be killed by radiation or big guns. The world will not end with zombies, but rather robot cockroaches. Regardless, the technology is still pretty impressive. It just terrifies me.

In what sounds like the most dystopian novel I’ve ever read, Wikileaks explained the extent of the surveillance operation in a release:

International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users’ physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.

But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about ’good Western countries’ exporting to ’bad developing world countries’. Western companies are also selling a vast range of mass surveillance equipment to Western intelligence agencies. In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm. Intelligence companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations. Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.

The Wikileaks release also explains that citizens involved in overthrowing their respective dictators during the Arab Spring this year discovered listening rooms “where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.” Further, the Spyfiles announcement details how surveillance entities in the U.S., Italy and France have manufactured viruses to infiltrate private computers and smart phones – they’re looking at you, iPhone, Blackberry, and Gmail users – in order to essentially hijack the device and record its every movement.

Wikileaks cohort OWNI have taken the Spyfiles release and created a remarkably fascinating – and outright terrifying – interactive map to help make sense of this new information to the visually-inclined. Go ahead and play around with it and become scared.

Not included in the video above is an extended account of how intelligence surveillance isn’t only limited to certain regions of the world:

But software users in the West are not safe either. Assange and other members of the panel told reporters how Western intelligence services used electronic devices to monitor the activities of its citizens. In Britain MI5 apparently used specialized voice recognition software implanted into cell phones that could make out who was speaking to whom. Other intelligence agencies had the ability to figure out where exactly the user was located, what they were typing and what they looked like. One of the programs allowed agencies to take photos of unsuspecting victims by using cameras implanted into their phones.

One intrepid tweeter already seems to have corroborated Wikipedia’s claim:

More mysterious is that Wikileaks seems to be experiencing some accessibility issues with their website right now following the release of the Spyfiles:

Not to be crass about what has been a pretty sobering article up to this point, but does this mean that I should hurry up and pay my parking tickets now or is it really just too late to even worry about that?

The Wired Threat Level blog said Nacchio refused a February 27, 2001 request from the NSA for phone records. That refusal prompted the government to retaliate by denying contracts to Qwest, according to Nacchio’s court documents.

In his insider trading case, the presiding judge would not permit that testimony to be brought into the trial. The Rocky Mountain News said, “Nacchio would have to take the stand to raise the classified defense,” at his original trial.

Court documents from the original trial cited by Rocky Mountain News have no trace of Nacchio’s contention:

The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.

The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.

Nacchio’s case is on appeal, but it now poses the possibility of revealing domestic surveillance began before 9/11. Meanwhile, the House has a bill under consideration to address domestic spying; the bill has elicited a veto threat from President Bush if it does not include “retroactive immunity” for the telecoms concerned.

Nancy Pelosi talked tough during election season, but it appears that’s all it was – just talk.

Not only is the EFF trying to remind the government, citizens, and AT&T that the Constitution forbids such practices, they’re also throwing the fact that AT&T, eighty years ago, actually took the side of the citizens.

In 1928, when the telephone was proliferating throughout the US, AT&T likened government surveillance of phone lines to the writs of assistance issued by King George II and III authorizing searches of anyone, anywhere, whether or not they were suspected of a crime.

If you remember your American history, this was one of the "abuses and usurpations" that made it necessary for the British colonies in America "to dissolve the political which" had connected them. In short, it was a cause for revolution.

So when the question of wiretapping came to the Supreme Court’s attention in 1928, AT&T filed an amicus brief against the United States.

Excerpted from that, as the EFF’s Derek Slater shows, is the following:

"The telephone companies deplore the use of their facilities in furtherance of any criminal or wrongful enterprise. But it was not solicitude for law breakers that caused the people of the United States to ordain the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as part of the Constitution…. [I]t is better that a few criminals escape than that the privacies of life of all the people be exposed to the agents of the government, who will act at their own discretion, the honest and the dishonest, unauthorized and unrestrained by courts.

"The telephone has become part and parcel of the social and business intercourse of the people of the United States, and this telephone system offers a means of espionage to which general warrants and writs of assistance were the puniest instruments of tyranny and oppression."

It begs the question: What has happened to Ma Bell over the last century that it would repeatedly take sides against the wishes and rights of the American public? And what happened to the ideals of government we set up so long ago?

My guess: Money happened. Lots of it.

Slater concludes:

AT&T isn’t the only one in need of a history lesson; Congress is, too, and it’s up to each and every one of us to set our representatives straight. By passing horrible legislation last week permitting the warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications, Congress failed to do its job and check the Executive’s abuse of power. Now we must do our democratic duty and help restore our Constitutional rights.

And I conclude with a quote from the man that wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion… We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?"

Looks like we’ve waited far too long.

A BBC report said the popular Blackberry devices, used by millions of people to keep up with their email, have been declared out of bounds for use by French government officials. The edict has met with less enthusiasm than pairing red wine with seafood at dinner:

But some officials are flouting the ban and using them in secret, it adds.

“They tried to offer us something else to replace our Blackberries but it doesn’t work,” one unnamed official told (Le Monde).

RIM has defended its solution by citing its encryption and its approval by NATO and several national governments on security grounds. They also told the BBC that the NSA, America’s agency responsible for breaking encrypted communications, can’t view Blackberry messages.

One has to wonder if allegations that AT&T provided the NSA with unfettered access to Internet traffic has influenced the French paranoia. It is likely encrypted traffic heading out of the US to foreign destinations would pique the interest of the codebreakers working at Fort Meade.

The timing of the French complaint, well over a year after the Electronic Frontier Foundation dropped AT&T documents onto the judge’s bench in their class-action spying case, should also be cause for wonder. Did some piece of private information somehow become public after having been sent to or from a Blackberry? The report does not say.

Odd Privacy Comments From Google’s Fleischer

Peter Fleischer became the latest to speak out about Sweden’s proposed law. If it takes effect, the government will be able legally to monitor email and telephone traffic going in and out of Sweden.

A Swedish English-language publication, The Local, cited Fleischer’s remarks from a Tuesday visit to the country:

"We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden’s borders if the proposal goes through," Fleischer told Internet World. "We simply cannot compromise our users’ integrity by allowing Swedish authorities access to data that may not even concern Swedish activity," said Fleischer. "The proposal stems from a tradition begun by Saudi Arabia and China and simply has no place in a western democracy," he said.

That last comment caught our attention. We’re sure Fleischer is a busy guy, but he had to see the memo about Google willingly entering China and acceding to government censorship.

Then there is the matter of similar spying taking place much closer to Google’s Mountain View home. As many in the tech industry and elsewhere have noted, AT&T has been accused by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a former AT&T employee of doing what Sweden proposes.

Maybe we just missed the news that Fleischer or someone at Google has filed an amicus brief in the EFF case. If they haven’t, Fleischer might want to look into what this western democracy in America has been accused of doing to US citizens on a massive scale.

Google Says You Are In Charge

Personalized search is the key to freedom when it comes to using Google. The company’s Peter Fleischer, global policy counsel, said the search giant’s policy’s put the user in charge of what they share with the company.

His op-ed piece appeared in the Financial Times, where Fleischer discussed the function of personalized search, and the challenges in finding a middle ground with its services.

He discussed the concept of context as it applies to how people search. Fleischer cited the example of searching for Paris; one searcher may searching for a romantic European getaway, while another could be looking for love life gossip about a certain hotel fortune heiress.

The more personalization people permit Google to have, the greater relevance their search results will have for those users. That’s where the quandary takes place, according to him:

The question is how do we deal with this challenge? Stop all progress on personalized search or give people a choice? We believe that the responsible way to handle this privacy issue is to ask users if they want to opt in to the service. That is why Google requires people to open an account and turn on their personalized search functionality.

Though people can turn personalized search off and on as desired, the option to do so is what has been questioned: Why should Google keep data for any reason? Fleischer said there is so much information coming online each day, “more targeted and personal results can really add to people’s quality of life.”

In other words, better living through Google.

So to help anyone interested in learning more about Digg sort through the jungle of information out there I have created the following list of bloggers who in my eyes have proved through their writings on the subject that they really know what they are talking about. These guys have established themselves as authorities on the subject of Digg. So here is the list of the Digg experts along with a few links to what they have written about Digg. I am sure there are others experts out there but these are the ones that I have found to be the most insightful. If you know of anyone else who deserves to be on this list please list them in the comments.

Neil Patel

- Beginner’s Guide to Digg
- How to get on the Digg homepage
- How Not To Get Your URL Banned From Digg
- Spying On Digg

Muhammad Saleem

- The Digg Economy: Socialist Bookmarking
- Why Digg’s Numbers Matter
- Why The Wisdom of Crowds Fails on Digg
- Legalizing The Underground Digg Economy

Todd Malicoat

- Etiquette for Submitting Stories to Digg
- The Search Marketers Guide to Digg

Ozgur Alaz

- Top 10 Actionable Tips (Rules) That Make Me Top Digg User

Stephen

- On Diggs and Votes, but no Reads.
- Digg’s Upcoming Features?

Cristian Mezei

- The Digg Algorithm – Unofficial FAQ

Rand Fishkin

- Why It Doesn’t Pay to Game Digg (or Other Link Aggregation Sites)
- Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content

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Chris Sandberg is an independent internet marketer from who blogs regularly about search marketing and internet business.

Google Earths & Maps, led by Director John Hanke, will be grouped together under the company name Mappuls AG. Google says Endoxon’s engineering staff and technical resources will bolster Google Earth and Maps’ analysis capabilities and improve functionality of those services in Europe.

“The Endoxon team has demonstrated passion and innovation in online mapping and has developed compelling technology that will enhance our Google geo products worldwide,” said Hanke.

“We’re also excited about having a dedicated team in Europe that can bring a distinctively European focus to our Maps products in those markets.”

Founded in 1988, Endoxon has become known in Europe as a developer of mapping, mobile, data processing, cartography, and direct marketing services, as well as the developer of the Trinity software suite.

The company specializes in AJAX mapping technologies, geo-referencing data processing, and aerial and satellite imaging.

There’s been no word from France yet regarding the blatant attempt to anglicize the world, as was feared with Google Print for Libraries. No word yet from the conspiracy theorists either, though it’s obvious this is a CIA spying front corporation.

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Baskins quit HP and invoked her Fifth Amendment rights at the House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting. Other ex-HP staffers, and outside investigators, also took the Fifth and refused to answer questions, ABC News reported.

Dunn reportedly engaged investigators to track down news leaks from the company’s board. The investigation spiraled to include several reporters, and many of the people affected by the probe had their personal phone records accessed by investigators who deceived phone company personnel into disclosing them.

That deception, referred to as “pretexting,” earned the assembled HP people a lengthy scolding from the Committee:

HP had no answers, save one.

“How did such an abuse of privacy occur in a company renowned for its commitment to privacy? It’s an age-old story. The ends came to justify the means,” Hurd read from a prepared statement.

Investigations by the California Attorney General’s office, and by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, could result in various punishments for the company and people involved with the controversial probe.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.