1104-Wearing Google Glass and NSA directly collected data

(1) Wearing Google Glass while driving in dispute


Wearing Google Glass is widely deemed tech-savvy, but it can also become a short cut to a traffic ticket, at least in the United States.

It was reported that California Highway Patrol fined Google Glass user Cecilia Abadie for speeding and, more importantly, wearing the cutting-edge gadget while driving.

Abadie was issued a ticket for “driving with a monitor visible to the driver.” According to California law, it’s illegal to drive with a video screen near the driver’s seat, except for GPS.

She reportedly refused to pay the fine and instead will plead for her innocence at a trial scheduled for Dec. 30 this year.

According to U.S. media, this is the first case of a driver receiving a fine for using wearable computers. Google said that users “should always use Glass responsibly and put their safety and the safety of others first.”

By Sung Jin-woo, Intern reporter (jinwoo0120@hearldcorp.com)


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(2) NSA directly collected data through undersea cables: report

The U.S. National Security Agency may have been directly collecting data around the world through undersea fiber-optic cables, a Japanese newspaper reported on Monday.

According to the report by the Asahi Shimbun, the NSA tapped into phone data and Internet servers by running a surveillance program called “Upstream” near San Francisco and New York, where some 80 percent of the world’s information passes through.

The agency coupled the program with Prism, a program that lets intelligence analysts track people’s movements and phone calls in cooperation with U.S. telecom operators to gather a massive amount of metadata, the report said.

With another surveillance tool called XKS, or Xkeyscore, which allows users to monitor and store data, the NSA is speculated to have accessed emails and Internet browsing history as well.

William Binney, a former NSA technical director-turned-whistleblower, said the agency collected data in real time with Upstream and Prism. He added that the NSA narrowed down the subjects to be monitored based on the information they gleaned from two programs and ran XKS to capture the contents of communication.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)