The U.S. government can track where you are, who you’re with, what you look like, and where you’ll likely be next thanks to a tool created by defense contractor Raytheon.

The tool, called Riot, or rapid information overlay technology, looks at your Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, and Foursquare to determine these different data points about you, according to the Guardian, which procured a video showing off Riot. It was created out of a partnership between the U.S. government and Raytheon, though the company says it has not been sold to anyone yet.

While the tool will likely see use in uncovering information about individuals who could be considered a threat, it’s a reminder to all of us that our social data, in aggregate, is a very powerful thing. The tool scrapes these four social networks and can map out where you’ve been on Google Earth, with little pin drops denoting your check-ins. It can do the same for your photos, which have meta data often showing location coordinates. Those are then mapped out, allowing anyone to view a photo based on the location is was taken.

Once they’ve viewed one of your photos, of course, then they know what you look like.

Based on your location data, Riot can create graphs that show not only where you check in, but how often, what days of the week, and what times you most frequent that place. In the video, a Raytheon employee Brian Urch used his colleague Nick as an example. He was able to see that Nick goes to the gym most often during June on Mondays at 6 a.m.

“So if you ever did want to try to get a hold of Nick, or get a hold of his laptop, you may want to visit the gym at 6 a.m. on Monday,” said Urch in the video.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the U.S. government reach out for social data. In January 2012, the FBI put out a request for proposals for a tool that could spider different social networks, gathering keywords, to determine when an emergency situation was occurring, or about to occur. It would then set off alarms, alerting the authorities as early as possible.

photo credit: Trippenbach via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

U.S. authorities want to give alleged Megaupload kingpin Kim Dotcom access to just a single 40-page document out of 22 million e-mails before his extradition hearing, according to Stuff.co.nz.

Dotcom has become a bit of an Internet folk hero as of late and now is acting as a larger-than-life figure fighting overreaching government charges. His file-sharing service Megaupload was shut down in January by U.S. and New Zealand authorities as part of a massive sting operation against sites that enabled copyright infringement. The two governments had Dotcom arrested, seized his assets (illegally, according to a judge), and filed an extradition request to have him sent to the U.S. from New Zealand. Since that time, he has attracted the support of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who says the case against Dotcom is “weak.”

Now the FBI does not want to give Dotcom access to its large stores of evidence before his Aug. 6 extradition hearing. Instead, it wants to provide him and his team with a 40-page document that summarizes 22 million e-mails that the U.S. is using as evidence. The U.S. argues that Dotcom does not need to see all the evidence against him before he faces trial in U.S. courts.

Dotcom’s legal team said disclosure of all the evidence against Dotcom is necessary to defend him during the extradition hearing. Without all the evidence, his lawyers said, they would have “their hands tied behind their backs.”

Dotcom recently blamed U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for having authorities target Megaupload. He also blames MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) president and former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd.

Next up in the case, a U.S. court will hear a motion from Dotcom’s lawyers on July 27 to dismiss all of his charges, according to New Zealand’s Times Live. We don’t expect anything to come of it.

Kim Dotcom photo illustration: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Near Infinity, a software development and big data company the caters to the U.S. government, has raised $17 million in a new round of funding.

Near Infinity builds applications for the U.S. intelligence community for personal communication, search, analysis, and security. The company also builds custom mobile apps for government agencies. Instead of coding from scratch for each project, the company has built a development platform to cut the time needed to build new software.

The latest funding for the Virginia-based company comes from Columbia Capital and Razor’s Edge Ventures. Near Infinity plans to use the funds for growth and acquisitions. The press release follows:

Near Infinity raises $17 million in growth capital from leading investment firms; names Dr. Ric Upton as President

Near Infinity is pleased to announce that it has raised $17 million in equity capital from Columbia Capital and Razor’s Edge Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate organic growth and pursue acquisition opportunities. In conjunction with the financing, Near Infinity welcomes Dr. Richard A. Upton as President. Dr. Upton has extensive experience driving growth of high technology firms having held executive leadership positions at BBN Technologies, ALPHATECH Inc., and TASC.

Near Infinity is a leader in software development for the federal market specifically in the fields of cloud and big data analytics, mobile security and trusted applications. Founded in 2002 by Reston-native Chris D’Agostino, the company focuses on solving key Intelligence Community mission challenges.

“Near Infinity has a lot of momentum right now, ” said founder and CTO Chris D’Agostino. “We’ve been profitable with strong growth for years, but with the financial backing and industry relationships now available to us through Columbia Capital and Razor’s Edge and the addition of Ric Upton, we can scale more aggressively, especially around mobile and big data products and services.”

In his new role at Near Infinity, Dr. Upton will be focused on growing the business and expanding into new customer spaces within the U.S. Intelligence and Defense communities. “With Columbia’s mobile expertise, Razor’s extensive knowledge of the national security market, and our deep pool of talented engineers and differentiated products/services, Near Infinity is a force to be reckoned with,” said Upton. “This is an exciting time to be joining the team. “

Arun Gupta, Partner at Columbia Capital, emphasized the partnership aspect of the investment moving forward. “We believe that Near Infinity is well-positioned in what we believe will be an explosive market for products and services at the intersection of mobile, big data, and cyber. It is very impressive what the company has accomplished to date and we are excited to work with them to accelerate scaling the business.”

Mark Spoto, Managing Director of Razor’s Edge Ventures, agrees. “We are confident that Near Infinity’s unique expertise will be needed by an expanding set of customers, and we look forward to helping them accelerate their diversification into new markets and customers.”

As the company grows, the management team will focus on maintaining aspects of the company that have made it unique. “One of the best aspects about this investment is that NIC has an opportunity to grow without disrupting our culture,” said D’Agostino. “The things that NIC employees love – our benefits, our passion for technology, our focus on people – these are the things that have allowed us to attract and keep the area’s best developers. We are making sure they stay intact moving forward.”

The CTO and CIO of the U.S. government have announced a new digital roadmap for the U.S. that encourages the further use of open data, and tries to inspire developers to work for the government.

“We have an opportunity to make this country shine,” U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said along with Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel (pictured) today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York.

Both men spoke about their goal of improving the government’s digital initiatives as well as attracting talented developers to their cause.

The new roadmap is centered on five ideas:

• Open Data as the new default
• Anywhere, anytime on any device
• Everything should be an API
• Make government data social
• Change the meaning of social participation

One of the more interesting aspects VanRoekel noted was that the government would create no more .gov websites because there are already so many. He also said the government plans to focus on building everything on the web using HTML5 standards for broader and easier access to information by more people.

The government’s official document on its Digital Government Strategy broadly sets out to accomplish the following three things:

Enable the American people and an increasingly mobile workforce to access high-quality digital government information and services anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Operationalizing an information-centric model, we can architect our systems for interoperability and openness, modernize our content publication model, and deliver better, device-agnostic digital services at a lower cost.

Ensure that as the government adjusts to this new digital world, we seize the opportunity to procure and manage devices, applications, and data in smart, secure and affordable ways.

Learning from the previous transition of moving information and services online, we now have an opportunity to break free from the inefficient, costly, and fragmented practices of the past, build a sound governance structure for digital services, and do mobile “right” from the beginning.

Unlock the power of government data to spur innovation across our Nation and improve the quality of services for the American people.

We must enable the public, entrepreneurs, and our own government programs to better leverage the rich wealth of federal data to pour into applications and services by ensuring that data is open and machine-readable by default.

Photo credit: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Megaupload, the popular file-hosting site that the U.S. government shut down in mid-January, may have had many users in the U.S. government, according to new interview with founder Kim Dotcom.

Dotcom (pictured) and several other Megaupload employees were named in a 72-page indictment issued in January. It alleges that Dotcom and his colleagues facilitated $500 million in damages to copyright owners.

In a new interview with TorrentFreak, Dotcom said that Megaupload has been “negotiating” with the Department of Justice to get back files that were lost when Megaupload was shut down. At the time of the shut down, many users were vocally upset they lost legal files that were hosted on Megaupload.

While Dotcom talked about helping users get their files back, he also let slip another revealing detail about Megaupload that could make the U.S. government look bad: “Guess what – we found a large number of Mega accounts from US Government officials including the Department of Justice and the US Senate,” Dotcom said.

If Dotcom’s statement holds true, it will likely strengthen Megaupload’s position in court. If the files U.S. employees were sharing were legal, Megaupload can use them as an example to show how it is a legitimate business. Alternately, if the files government employees were sharing were illegal, Megaupload can use them to show how it had no control over what users were doing and that even the government had copyright violators.

The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offered help to users get back files in early February, but Megaupload customers still have no simple way to reclaim their their files. Megaupload users who are still without access to important files (including government employees!) can e-mail the EFF at megauploadmissing@eff.org.

Dotcom is now out on bail in New Zealand, but the U.S. government has filed extradition papers to send him to the U.S. for trial. Dotcom maintains that he is innocent of all charges.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Former National Security Agency director Mike McConnell urged cloud companies to have a political opinion today, stating the US government is moving “very, very slowly  to address [cloud] threats.”

“We are the most digitally dependent nation on earth, we have more to lose,” said McConnell at the RSA Conference in San Francisco today. “There isn’t an entity on the globe that’s safe from penetration, not one.”

McConnell, currently the vice chairman of technology strategy firm Booz Allen Hamilton, spent 29 years as a U.S. Navy Intelligence Officer, and soon thereafter, the director of the NSA. During his time serving in the Navy, McConnell spent time wiretapping the enemy. They were confident that any attack on the country would be known, would be expected, would be protected against. Today, in the age of the cloud, McConnell is worried.

After the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York, McConnell met with then President George W. Bush in the oval office. He explained that while they were taking offensive actions against terrorist organizations, they weren’t being digitally defensive at home. If one of the terrorists had programming experience, and could hack into only one of the U.S.’s banks, it could have a economic damage on the country and the globe far bigger than the damage felt by 9/11.

The former president immediately gave McConnell $13.7 billion to start patching the holes. When Obama came on board, he upped the budget to $18 billion. But thus far that money has only gone toward protecting .gov domains. However, ninety-eight percent of the cloud exists on .com domains.

For McConnell, it is up to the cloud companies to take a political stance now, and ask representatives to protect the U.S. from what he calls “cyber economic espionage.” He says legislation is coming, but it’s not going to be enough. Cloud companies also need to start the debate about privacy regulation across country borders.

“I’ve got a message for you,” said McConnell. “Drive this technology, and drive the standards to force change. The economics of the cloud are compelling…and we’re going to have to get the security aspects of it right.”

Mike McConnell photo via Wikipedia

The Obama administration has unveiled a new framework for protecting Americans’ data on the Internet, including a commitment to technology that allows consumers to opt out of tracking, the government announced today.

“American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online,” said President Obama, in a statement. “As the Internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy. That’s why an online privacy Bill of Rights is so important. For businesses to succeed online, consumers must feel secure. By following this blueprint, companies, consumer advocates and policymakers can help protect consumers and ensure the Internet remains a platform for innovation and economic growth.”

Online privacy concerns has attracted an increasing level of scrutiny over the past few months, with Google making a sweeping controversial change to its privacy policies and the Path contact-stealing debacle that eventually exposed other iOS apps that invade your privacy.

The new “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” aims to put a stop to companies taking user data without notifying them and giving people the option to not be tracked. The government said that 90 percent of companies that control online behavioral ads, including Google, Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo, have already agreed to the framework to let consumers get out of being tracked online. By making that agreement, these companies will be subject to enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission.

The pillars of the bill are:

• Individual Control: Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data organizations collect from them and how they use it.
• Transparency: Consumers have a right to easily understandable information about privacy and security practices.
• Respect for Context: Consumers have a right to expect that organizations will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
• Security: Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
• Access and Accuracy: Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data are inaccurate.
• Focused Collection: Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
• Accountability: Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

While the bill is awfully vague, it’s a step in the right direction to help legislators in Congress come up with new ways to protect consumers online. And while the focus of this bill seems to be on advertisers like Google and AOL, it’s a shame Facebook — the company that controls and sells 800 million users’ worth of data — didn’t even get a single mention in the White House’s announcement blog post.

Do you think this is a step in the right direction for online privacy? What else would you like to see done?

Obama vs. Darth Vader photo: Michael Verdi/Flickr

British citizens Leigh Van Bryan (pictured, middle) and his friend Emily Bunting recently flew to Los Angeles for a holiday trip and instead were interrogated for five hours and locked up over night, according to The Sun newspaper.

Bryan told The Sun that he and his friend were treated like terrorists for quipping on social media. In the the U.K., “destroying” is slang for partying. And Bryan’s tweet about “diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up” is a reference to the TV show Family Guy.

The incident shows how next-generation law enforcement, where government agents monitor social networks for criminal activity, can go horribly astray. Like something out of Minority Report, the government admitted last week that it planned to take its social media monitoring to a new level by creating a tool that crawls Twitter, Facebook, and other networks to catch more crimes before they happen. But with the government’s over-reaction in this latest incident, perhaps it should reconsider.

Bryan and his friend were detained in separate cells overnight after being questioned, and Bryan shared a cell with suspected drug dealers. The two were put on a return flight to the U.K. the next morning. In a smart move, Bryan has since switched his Twitter profile to private.

You can see Bryan’s offending tweets and the official report by Homeland Security below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The National Transportation Safety Board has suggested a nation-wide ban on using cell phones for talking or texting while driving, even hand’s-free, in a steep measure that would change how people use their phones in the U.S.

Drivers distracted by electronics are becoming a serious problem in the U.S., with an estimated 3,092 roadway fatalities involving distracted drivers occurring in 2010. This recommendation, if adopted by states, would put an end to all non-emergency calls and texts by any driver. Passengers are in the clear to use phones as they please.

The ban would outlaw hands-free cell phone use on top of hand-held usage. Perhaps unfairly, the NTSB said devices installed in the cars themselves, like Ford Sync, would still be OK to use.

The NTSB decided to issue the recommendation because of a deadly pileup that happened in Gray Summit, Mo. in August 2010. During that incident, a 19-year-old driver sent or received 11 texts in 11 minutes right before a crash that killed two people and injured 38 others.

Many states have already addressed the issue of distracted drivers in their own ways, but not all have. In November, Pennsylvania became the 35th state to ban texting while driving.

Do you think there should be a nation-wide ban on cell phone use while driving?

Driver on cell phone image via Shutterstock