and we are still debating about Net Metering..

In my view, this is simply hoax being created by Utility Companies in advance to protect slide in their business in long term. Solar panel based electricity production is dampening their growth in short term and in long term going to kill them.. They are starting all this noise so these net metering could be killed and solar panels become un-attractive for future home owners. They know for sure that solar panel prices are continue to fall and within 5-10-20 years, they will become norm at each house.

Here is my take on why net metering is valid and in fact not only eligible for retail rate but in my view even higher prices then retail. Here are some of thoughts on this:

•  Solar Panels usually produce maximum when we have peak demand and help reduce peak demand of the grid. Utilities maintain specific peakers (small power plant or additional capacity in power plants) which they can get rid of or at least reduce capacity
• Regarding this talk about retail Vs wholesale price paid for electricity pumped back to grid by homeowners - this electricity is produced right next to the consumption point.. theoretically, your next door neighbor might be consuming the additional electricity generated by solar panels. It is not that this power is bloody going back to power station traversing all the transformers and grid.. NO.. It just uses few meters of the power cables and it gets consumed right next door.. It actually takes out the stress of grid and in a way help elongate life of the equipment. Reducing their failures and thus reducing their maintenance costs.. In a way it reduces overall transmission and distribution losses incurred while transporting electricity from central power plants to your home. In my view, they should be paid more than retail price!! and this is no joke..  even utility companies knows the value of this distributed generation.. 

There can be hundreds of more logical reasons be listed in favor of these solar panels.. there is no end to this discussion.. Ultimately , they are good for consumers and they are good for  environment.. It is definitely not good for utilities in long run.. However, utilities need to decide, whether they want to die gracefully or they want to die in anguish and pain.. moreover, they are not going to die completely any how.. at least in 30-50 years for sure.. there role could become infrastructure service provider instead of providing electricity itself..

‘NET METERING’

Analysis says solar will carry high cost

Industry battles news that nonusers may pay $1.1B per year by 2020

By Dana Hull

dhull@mercurynews.com 

A long-awaited analysis of “net metering,” the policy that allows homeowners, school districts and businesses to offset the cost of their electric use with the rooftop solar power they generate and export to the grid, finds the policy will cost California’s nonsolar customers $1.1 billion a year by 2020.

The lengthy “California Net Energy Metering Evaluation,” released Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission, will strongly influence discussions among state regulators about how to restructure electric rates.
The solar industry is already crying foul, saying the study design was stacked against solar. Others say it’s time for net metering to be overhauled.

“There’s no question that there’s a subsidy to solar customers,” said Marcel Hawiger of TURN, the Utility Reform Network. “Net metering was a policy designed to jump-start the solar industry in California, but it’s not a sustainable policy.”

Large utilities like PG&E have a four-tiered rate system: The more electricity you use, the more you pay. Tier 1 customers pay 13.2 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, while at Tier 4 it’s 35.1 cents. The tiered rate structure has been a big driver of rooftop solar in California, since many homeowners who go solar do so to cut down on high monthly bills. Solar customers are reimbursed for the electricity they generate and export to the grid at the retail rate.

Utilities have argued that under the current rate structure, customers using net metering do not pay their fair share of the costs of the transmission and distribution grid. And since solar customers tend to be more affluent, utilities argue that lower-income, nonsolar ratepayers are subsidizing solar customers.

The solar industry is already fighting back against the report, noting solar is increasingly being adopted by middle-income consumers, creates jobs for installers and that everyone benefits from “avoided costs,” or the need for utilities to build additional power plants.

“The study design was stacked against solar,” said Susannah Churchill, solar policy director at Vote Solar, a solar advocacy group in San Francisco. “To do a cost-benefit analysis and not include benefits like public health and jobs just inflates utility claims. Rooftop solar is a threat to the utility business model, and they are doing everything possible to stop its momentum.”

The report, by the San Francisco- based consulting group E3, found that most homeowners who have solar systems are high energy users with an average household income of $91,000, well above the state average of $54,000, and that the savings that solar customers achieve on their own bills is shifted to other ratepayers who must make up the difference.

PG&E has more than 93,000 customers on net metering and adds roughly 2,000 more each month at a pace that, from a utility perspective, is not financially sustainable.

“PG&E has long supported solar for its environmental benefits,” said spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo. “We are the largest buyer of solar energy in the nation, and lead the nation in the number of customers who have installed solar on their rooftops. We look forward to working with lawmakers, regulators, industry and our customers to chart a path to a bright and sustainable solar future.”

E3 will present the results of the NEM study in the PUC auditorium at 505 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, on Friday, and is accepting public comments until Oct. 10.

Contact Dana Hull at 408-920-2706. Follow her at Twitter.com/danahull.

let the game begun!!

It is amazing how quickly our friends on other side has caught up with Apple's coolest newest user-friendliest feature in their latest and greatest iPhone yet...

I think all these things are well known, and assuming that even password protection must be breakable by intelligent friends. No one can deny that any system can be hacked. However, there has to be balance between usability and security requirements. I think, iPhone 5S users will decide on their own. Off-course, all these news do make significant impact on user's choices, still, knowing Apple, I know for sure that most of the users will use this cool feature which will make life so much easier.. Especially any one using enterprise emails on iPhone, where they put stringent requirement on password and locking time.


Hackers beat iPhone fingerprint

German group finds way around biometric sensor

By Frank Jordans

Associated Press

BERLIN — The fingerprint- based security system used to unlock Apple’s latest iPhone can be bypassed using a household printer and some wood glue, a German hacking group has claimed. A spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club said the group managed to fool the biometric sensor in the iPhone 5s over the weekend by creating an artificial copy of a genuine fingerprint.

“It was surprisingly easy,” Dirk Engling told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday, a day after the group announced the exploit on its website. A member of the Chaos Computer Club going by the pseudonym Starbug took a high-resolution photograph of a fingerprint left on a glass surface, printed it onto a transparent sheet and smeared the pattern with liquid latex or wood glue. Once the glue set, it could be peeled off and placed on another finger to mimic the genuine print, Engling said. “We used this method 10 years ago and didn’t have to change much for the iPhone,” he said. “The hardest bit was getting hold of one of those new iPhones because they are chronically sold out.”

Engling said the Chaos Computer Club, which has a long history of finding security flaws in soft- and hardware, documented the procedure with several videos so independent experts could verify it.

David Emm, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs, said the German group’s claims exposed the flip side of biometric security systems designed to replace passwords or PIN numbers commonly used nowadays.

“If my passcode becomes compromised, I can simply replace it with a new one — hopefully one that’s more secure. But I can’t change my fingerprint — it’s part of what I am and so I’m stuck with it,” Emm said.

Engling suggested that Apple could have made its fingerprint system more secure, but that this might have caused problems for users if they didn’t swipe their finger across the miniature scanner properly and thus got locked out of the device after repeated failed attempts.

“Apple had to strike a balance between security and user-friendliness,” he said.

Apple didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.

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ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The iPhone 5s lets a user configure the device for fingerprint recognition as a security check. A German group says it used wood glue to beat the technology.

and.. the iPhone 5S/C saga continues..

Whatever critics might say about new iPhone, public seems to love it.. Kudos to Apple to continue delivering such a great product which keeps on meeting expectation or I should say keeps on beating expectations of critics and every common sense..

It is amazing to see how quickly these phones evaporates or seems to evaporate.. I am sure this is also Apple's marketing strategy to make them evaporate.. but that is minor or small part of all the story..

Bigger piece of story is Apple's pricing strategy.. Everyone was hoping for cheaper iPhone as part in iPhone product line up.. but in my view, Apple has done exactly opposite.. they have increased price  (or at least margins) on so called older generation phone.. To understand this, you have to compare last year's launch.. Till last year, Apple used to reduce price of previous generation iPhone by $100. This year, they officially removed previous generation (iPhone5) and instead of launched iPhone5c. Which in-fact is iPhone5 from inside. Only thing different is that it has now even cheaper plastic back (though in beautiful bright colors) thus reducing cost of manufacturing of this so called iPhone5.

Essentially, Apple has launched same phone but increased price realization. So, Apple's strategy is very simple:

1. They are NOT going to launch cheaper iPhone. They will maintain their premium pricing position in market. 
2. They are NOT going after mass market or volume. They are trying to increase profitability. At the same time, they are solving supply chain issues.. 5c will use different back covers and hopefully, it will cost less to manufacture.. 
3. They are going after new segment - kids of affluent parents and young crowd with iPhone5c. Instead of iPod touch, these kids will get iPhone5c. Normally, in US these kids often used to get hands down iPhone from parents. Now, these kids will demand iPhone5c as it is more likely not to break with robust use.. 
4. They have in-fact created teaser price for Adults as well. All agree that there is no quantum difference between 5s and 5. To avoid iPhone5 cannibalizing their 5s market, they shut down new iPhone5s and created relatively speaking inferior 5c for same price they would have offered iPhone5. 
5. Regarding low cost alternative, Apple is simply going to rely on their exchange program. They will get lot of exchanged phones, probably change their battery and push it to emerging cost conscious market. I am guessing that duties on these returned/re-furbished phones will also be substantially lower helping them keep costs and prices low in those markets. 

In my view, it is brilliant pricing strategy and it will continue Apple as true leader in smartphone space.. They may not be leader by volume but I am sure they will continue their lead by other metrics such as actual usage and apps/music/videos etc..

Nevertheless, people are enjoying their new iPhones.. I am guessing this next quarter is going to be stellar quarter for Apple with significant jump in their profitability leading to significant jump in their share prices!!

PALO ALTO’S APPLE STORE

Shortage of iPhones mutes buying frenzy

CEOCook greets legions of Bay Area Apple fans; devices quickly run out

By Heather Somerville

hsomerville@bayareanewsgroup.com 

PALO ALTO — For the first time ever, Apple released two iPhones simultaneously, but fans did not get double the choice, as a widespread shortage kept supplies low in stores.

The dual iPhone release finished out a tumultuous couple of weeks for the tech giant, which took a hit on the stock market, rebuffed backlash over the pricing of its low-cost iPhone option and discovered a security glitch in its new operating system. The pressure was on for Apple to post big sales of the new iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, and assure consumers and investors that the Cupertino company still had something revolutionary up its sleeve.

Apple fans turned out in droves to stores across the Bay Area, many camping in line for days in hopes of getting one of the coveted iPhone 5S, the company’s new flagship device loaded with Apple’s latest and greatest. On Palo Alto’s University Avenue, fans got another surprise when the store opened Friday morning — an upbeat Apple CEO Tim Cook, who shook hands, posed for pictures and joined the crowd for a few celebratory cheers. 

Cook then paid a visit to the store at Stanford Shopping Center and later sent his first tweet: “Seeing so many happy customers reminds us of why we do what we do.” 

---

JANE TYSKA/STAFF PHOTOS

CEO Tim Cook celebrates the release of the new iPhones as he leaves the Apple Store on University Avenue in Palo Alto.

---

Dorothy Arndt, left, and veteran Bob Younger, of San Jose, showed up in Palo Alto along with a group from Gift A Vet, an organization supporting veterans in need. Arndt left the store with an iPhone 5S to give to a 53-year-old disabled Santa Clara County veteran.
==========================================================================

Spectrum of colors 

First in line to meet Cook and get the new iPhone was a group from San Jose-based Gift A Vet, an organization dedicated to supporting veterans in need. Dorothy Arndt said she had been camped out since Monday, trading 12hour shifts with vets and colleagues. She left the store with a 16GB iPhone 5S in “space gray” to give to a 53-year-old disabled Santa Clara County veteran struggling to make ends meet on public assistance. 

The iPhone 5S rolled out in metallic colors and with super-speedy processing power and upgraded camera features, and the lower-cost, heavier iPhone 5C is offered in a spectrum of candy-coated colors. Along with the U.S., Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the U.K. launched the iPhone 5S and 5C on Friday. But Apple released only a limited number of the coveted iPhone 5S for the worldwide launch and only a handful of those in gold — the color that most fans were lusting after. “Everyone wanted gold,” said Benjamin Smith of Sunnyvale, who settled for gray at the University Avenue store. The iPhone 5C was more plentiful, but few fans were willing to pull out their credit cards for what some have called a repackaged version of the older iPhone 5, dressed in colorful plastic. It starts at $99. 

Megan Davidson, 21, arrived at the Sprint store in Palo Alto at 3:45 a.m., where she avoided the crowd at the Apple store and was first in line for the 5S. “I think the 5C is more geared toward kids and cheaper,” she said. “I want the legit Apple phone.” 

Gold is first to go 

Shortages of the iPhone 5S were apparent in stores across the Peninsula, with websites showing shipments delayed until October. The location at Stanford Shopping Center ran out of unlocked units — phones sold without the software code that limits them to work only on one wireless carrier — before 9:30 a.m. An employee said the gold phones were first to go and the store had “a very limited number.” The Best Buy on Almaden Expressway in San Jose had 28 units of the 5S and sold out before 11:30 a.m., said store manager Mark Fragoza. The store had more than twice as many phones when the iPhone 5 launched last year. The picture wasn’t much better on the other side of the pond. Carriers in the U.K. told the BBC there was a severe shortage of the iPhone 5S, and customers in Asia and Australia were told they’ll have to wait until October. 

“Demand for the new iPhones has been incredible and we are currently sold out or have limited supply of certain iPhone 5S models in some stores,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans said Friday. 

Opening sales crucial 

Opening-weekend sales are crucial for Apple after about a year without releasing a new device while rivals have begun to chip away at Apple’s dominance in the smartphone market. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a note to investors he expected Apple would sell 5 million to 6 million iPhones, including pre-sale orders that started Sept. 13. BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk wrote that he was encouraged because “lines were the strongest we have seen at both Apple and carrier stores” but wouldn’t know until Monday if unit sales would meet his expectations of 6 million during launch weekend. Apple has reportedly asked its suppliers to increase production of the gold-colored iPhone 5S by an additional one-third after seeing strong demand, people familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. What remains unclear is whether there are still manufacturing constraints that may keep supplies low. Apple did not respond to questions Friday about production. 

Contact Heather Somerville at 510-208-6413. Follow her at Twitter.com/heathersomervil. 
===================================================
 

JANE TYSKA/STAFF 

Hoa Tran, of San Jose, leaves with a new iPhone at the Apple Store on University Avenue in Palo Alto on Friday. Customers were lined up around the block. 

It is still not too late to move to bay area!!

Job market is still booming and expected to continue to boom.. not sure about rest of the california, however, SF/SJ and surrounding bay area counties are booming and if you have good skills in technology, it is still good time to move in.. Agreed, that housing has gone to the roof again, but that is expected to stabilize or get some minor correction when mortgage rates come off from their historical lows.

Come on friends.. it is great time to be back in valley!! and build or help build new FBs..

AUGUST HIRING

Growth in jobs gaining steam

South Bay labor market has best month in 13 years, while Bay Area overall gains 12,700


By George Avalos

gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com 

The Bay Area job market boomed in August, adding 12,700 jobs for its best one-month performance since October 2012, state labor officials reported Friday.

Santa Clara County did even better, adding 8,500 jobs, the best one-month performance for the county in more than 13 years. Those gains accounted for two-thirds of the jobs added in the Bay Area and more than one-fourth of the jobs gained in California last month, this newspaper’s analysis of data from the Employment Development Departmentshows. “The South Bay knocked one out of the park in August,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist with San Francisco-based Bank of the West.

The strong gains in August were a sharp contrast to July, when the Bay Area lost 4,400 jobs, sparking fears among some analysts that the region’s economy had begun to sputter, and the rebound might falter. 

The most recent results show that the tech sector, primarily in Silicon Valley, continues to serve as the foundation of a rebound that is gaining strength in a range of other industries across the Bay Area. 

“The tech sector is definitely doing well,” added Jordan Levine, director of economic research with Beacon Economics. “Companies are still investing in software, equipment, and intellectual property.” 

The East Bay, consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, added 2,300 jobs in August, the EDD figures showed. The San Francisco- San Mateo-Marin region added 1,900. 

California added 29,100 jobs during August, labor officials reported Friday, in a second straight month of robust employment gains statewide. The statewide and Bay Area numbers were all adjusted for seasonal factors. 

The statewide jobless rate worsened to 8.9 percent, the EDD reported, from 8.7 percent in July. That can occur because the jobs data and the jobless rate are compiled in separate surveys. 

Improving rates 

In contrast, unemployment rates improved throughout the Bay Area in August, according to a Beacon Economics analysis of the EDD figures. The Alameda County-Contra Costa County jobless rate was 7.1 percent, versus 7.4 percent the month before. The Santa Clara County-San Benito County jobless rate was 6.6 percent, compared with 6.9 percent. The San Francisco-San Mateo- Marin August jobless rate was 5.3 percent, better than the month-before rate of 5.5 percent, the Beacon analysis showed. During the one-year period that ended in August, job totals expanded by 1.9 percent in the Bay Area. The U.S. job market expanded by 1.6 percent and California by 1.5 percent over the same period. 

“The Bay Area is growing more robustly than California and the nation as a whole,” said Jon Haveman, chief economist with Marin Economic Consulting. And, he added, “it is creating more jobs with better wages” than the nation and the state. 

Strong sectors 

The strongest industry in Santa Clara County during August was the tech-focused professional scientific and technical service sector, which gained 1,500 jobs. Another tech sector, information services and products, gained 900. But manufacturing added 1,200, administrative support was up 1,100, retail gained 800 and construction added 700 jobs, according to Beacon. 

“Tech is still the economic engine for Santa Clara County, but the majority of the new jobs that were added were outside of tech,” said Michael Bernick, a research fellow with the Milken Institute and a former director of the state EDD. “You are seeing real diversity in the Santa Clara County job market.” 

The strong gains during August aren’t an anomaly, said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy “The trend in the Bay Area is real,” Levy said. “Very strong job growth is building. You see expansion everywhere from San Jose to San Francisco, and now the East Bay has turned modestly positive. Because of tech, the Bay Area will continue to do well. You have Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other companies expanding their office space because they are hiring employees.”Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167 or 408-3733556. Follow him at Twitter.com/georgeavalos. 

Anybody interested in this interesting job?

Seems really interesting job.. It will be really challenging and fun job!!! Once electric cars become commodity, Autonomous cars are going to be next battlefield for Car manufacturers.. Essentially, this could become great potential job creator in Silicon Valley. Google is already in lead in this area and with TESLA jumping this bandwagon, it will force all these traditional Car manufacturers to further augment there silicon valley labs with this autonomous driving system development..

What is Apple doing? It will be interesting to see them coming to this area.. They are king of User Experience.. moreover, if Google takes lead into these Autonomous Driving Systems they will embed Android into it.. Come on Apple.. you also need to do something in this next big thing.. They can atleast start with integrating their iPhone/iOS into rudimentary Vehicle control and display systems..

TESLA HIRING ENGINEER FOR AUTONOMOUS PUSH 

Tesla Motors has an interesting job description on its website: “Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Controls Engineer.” The full-time job, based in Palo Alto, seeks an engineer responsible for “developing vehicle-level decision-making and lateral and longitudinal control strategies for Tesla’s effort to pioneer fully automated driving.” In May, CEO Elon Musk told Bloomberg that he was talking to Google about “autopilot” systems. Tesla also has the ability to constantly update Model S features. Tesla’s chief technical officer, J.B. Straubel, is working on a “sensor suite” of safety features for the driver, which could include pedestrian detection, collision avoidance technology and additional cameras to monitor blind spots or obstructions while driving. 

Not up your alley? There are 836 jobs listed on the Tesla website. — Dana Hull 

Is independent Internet possible?

By name itself, Internet in network of networks.. how can you make it independent? I guess, you can only do it by creating island and controlling gateways for inbound and outbound traffic from your country to another if there is any such well defined things..

I totally understand President Dilma's anger on US. Is she also angry at China (her biggest buyer of raw materials) and Russia and many other countries/nations who do it all the time? Instead of getting angry at US, she should focus on more emphasis on technological build up in Brazil... then she can launch her counter offensive against any country she would like to as most of the other countries do it to her country..

Build infrastructure in your country so Google/facebook like companies are created in your own country rather than relying on silicon valley for all such critical to time passing applications and infrastructures.. Attack at fundamentals.. don't try to dress up the fact that your country let go the golden time of minting money on your natural resources without fixing core issues like infrastructure and education.. Now that you are facing the anemic growth music again, you are creating issues out of almost non-sense issues..

Work on fundamentals.. rest nature will take care of you..

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Angered over espionage, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is postponing a visit to Washington.


Brazil seeks online independence

President angered over revelations of U.S. spying

By Bradley Brooks and Frank Bajak

Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington’s widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments.

President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google.

The leader is so angered by the espionage that on Tuesday she postponed next month’s scheduled trip to Washington.

Internet security and policy experts say the Brazilian government’s reaction to information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is understandable, but warn it could set the Internet on a course of Balkanization.“The global backlash is only beginning and will get far more severe in coming months,” said Sascha Meinrath of the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank. “This notion of national privacy sovereignty is going to be an increasingly salient issue around the globe.”

While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping.

The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet’s open, interconnected structure.

The effort by Latin America’s biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say.

In December, countries advocating greater “cyber-sovereignty” pushed for such control at an International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai, with Western democracies led by the United States and the European Union in opposition.

U.S. digital security expert Bruce Schneier says that while Brazil’s response is a rational reaction to NSA spying, it is likely to embolden “some of the worst countries out there to seek more control over their citizens’ Internet. That’s Russia, China, Iran and Syria.”

Brazil is now pushing more aggressively than any other nation to end U.S. commercial hegemony on the Internet. More than 80 percent of online search, for example, is controlled by U.S.-based companies.

Most of Brazil’s global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff’s government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping.

Can Google counter NSA?

I don't think so.. They can try to counter novice hacker at the most... There is no doubt that folks at Google are smart.. very smart.. but nothing can beat the brute force and power of these national government run agencies..

Whatever their justification may be.. whatever noble cause or dreadful scenario they may be outlining as their justification to snoop into your inbox.. nobody is perfect and ultimately humans are humans.. These agencies like NSA, they are run by mere mortal humans and whenever these mortal humans get extreme power, they get corrupted.. there is misuse of these powers beyond original cause or motive and powerless mortals are crushed.. biggest example of this corruption is our Dear Mr. President Obama.. What not was promised by him before he got his role.. He painted Bush as evil person who has taken all the rights of Citizens in the name of war on terrorism.. part of the war (Iraq) which in-fact turned out to be one of the greatest and costliest mistake for US.

Nevertheless, we had thought that things will be restored back to normal when our Dear Mr. Obama comes to white house.. but we forgot the addiction of power part.. with white house comes unprecedented powers which whitewashed our Dear Mr. Obama's memory of promises to restore balance back to citizens rights.. What a fool we were??? thinking that everything will be back to normal..

At first that wiki-leak case.. which finally culminated in 35 years of prison for Mr. Manning and kind of permanent asylum status for Julian Assange. Then this case of our Snowden bhayyia.. I don't know, neither do I care about technicalities of these cases.. I only know that these individuals got truth about sleaziness of government run and supported dirty laundry.. Off-course, government officials whose laundry came out in open ought to go after these individuals.. But not our Dear Mr. President Obama.. Et tu Obama???? 

I would have appreciated if Mr. Obama would have come out in open and accepted that these operations are running and they are for whatever blah blah reasons.. and let go these daring individuals who just got truth out in public.. 

I seriously thought that Dear Mr. President Obama will initially give some supporting statements for his officials but after few weeks he simply forget about these individuals and pardon them or drop cases against them on some stupid technical reason which is not hard to create.. but relentless persuasion against these individuals who dared to bring out truth and only truth about sleazy operations of our own government funded by our money??? Whether you pardon them or not.. Dear Mr. President Obama.. we will never.. Whatever your justification for this stupid relentless persuasion of  so called criminal justice.. We will never pardon  you.. I hope in the history of presidents also.. your name will come as Bush part two.. 

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

Google hurries to slow spying

Tech giant accelerates encryption in backlash against surveillance


By Craig Timberg

Washington Post

Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday.

The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that U.S. government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs.

Google’s encryption initiative, initially approved last year, was accelerated in June as the tech giant struggled to guard its reputation as a reliable steward of user information amid controversy about the NSA’s Prism program, first reported in the Washington Post and the Guardian that month. Prism obtains data from U.S. technology companies, including Google, under various legal authorities.

Encrypting information flowing among data centers will not make it impossible for intelligence agencies to snoop on individual users of Google services, nor will it have any effect on legal requirements that the company comply with court orders or valid national security requests for data. But company officials and independent security experts said that increasingly widespread use of encryption technology makes mass surveillance more difficult — whether conducted by governments or other sophisticated hackers.
“It’s an arms race,” said Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering at Google. “We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.”

Experts say that, aside from the U.S. government, sophisticated government hacking efforts emanate from China, Russia, Britain and Israel.

The NSA seeks to defeat encryption through a variety of means, including by obtaining encryption “keys” to decode communications, by using supercomputers to break codes, and by influencing encryption standards to make them more vulnerable to outside attack, according to reports Thursday by The New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica, based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

But those reports made clear that encryption — essentially converting data into what appears to be gibberish when intercepted by outsiders — complicates government surveillance efforts, requiring that resources be devoted to decoding or otherwise defeating the systems.

Among the most common tactics, experts said, is to hack into individual computers or other devices used by people targeted for surveillance, making what amounts to an end run around coded communications.

Security experts said the time and energy required to defeat encryption forces surveillance efforts to be targeted more narrowly on the highestpriority targets — such as terrorism suspects — and limits the ability of governments to simply cast a net into the huge rivers of data flowing across the Internet.

“If the NSA wants to get into your system, they are going to get in. … Most of the people in my community are realistic about that,” said Christopher Soghoian, a computer security expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is all about making dragnet surveillance impossible.”

The NSA declined to comment for this article. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement Thursday saying: “Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their secrets, and today terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that.”

The U.S. intelligence community has been reeling since news reports based on Snowden’s documents began revealing remarkable new detail about how the government collects, analyzes and disseminates information — including, in some circumstances, the emails, video chats and phone communications of U.S. citizens.

Many of the documents portray U.S. companies as pliant “Corporate Partners” or “Providers” of information. While telecommunications companies have generally declined to comment on their relationships with government surveillance, some have reacted with outrage at the depictions in the NSA documents released by Snowden. They have joined civil liberties groups in demanding more transparency and insisting that information is turned over to the government only when required by law, often in the form of a court order.

In June, Google and Microsoft asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow them greater latitude in reporting how much information they turn over to the government.

On Friday, Yahoo issued its first “government transparency report,” saying it had received 12,444 requests for data from the U.S. government this year, covering the accounts of 40,322 users.

Google has long been more aggressive than its peers within the U.S. technology industry in deploying encryption technology. It turned on encryption in its popular Gmail service in 2010, and since then has added similar protections for Google searches for most users.

Yet even as it encrypted much of the data flowing between Google and its users, the information traveling between its data centers offered rare points of vulnerability to potential intruders, especially government surveillance agencies, security officials said.

User information — including copies of emails, search queries, videos and Web browsing history — typically is stored in several data centers that transmit information to each other on high-speed fiber-optic lines.

Several other companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, increasingly have begun using encryption for some of their services, though the quality varies by company. Communications between services — when an email, for example, is sent from a user of Gmail to a user of Microsoft’s Outlook mail — are not generally encrypted, appearing to surveillance systems as what experts call “clear text.”

“If the NSA wants to get into your system, they are going to get in … . Most of the people in my community are realistic about that. This is all about making dragnet surveillance impossible.”

— Christopher Soghoian, computer security expert, American Civil Liberties Union