Nobody likes it when you go through their stuff…even Google.

Recently a member of Google’s security team had a few @#$#% choice words for the NSA after discovering it had been monitoring Google’s internal data transfers.

So, like any good techies would, Google’s security team has begun encrypting the company’s internal network in order to prevent further surveillance.  (You wonder why they are just getting around to this now.)

The NSA’s history of domestic surveillance isn’t exactly news to anyone; but what’s new here is that the NSA wasn’t the only offending culprit.

It was our-dear-tea-drinking-friends-across-the-pond aswell. 

A joint program called ”MUSCULAR” run by the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ tapped into both Google and Yahoo’s private networks using a program, ironically enough, called “SERENDIPITY”.

(Oh! Look at these un-encrypted networks we just happened to stumble across; I’m sure no one will mind if we take a look at say…ALL OF NORTH AMERICA’S SEARCH HISTORY.”)

Apparently the information gleaned from “SERENDIPITY” often ended up in President Obama’s daily intelligence brief.

So what we are saying is yes: the President, the Prime Minster, and perhaps even he Queen of England know exactly how many times you watched “What Does the Fox Say?” 

Yvette Pappoe ’13, sociology discovered her passion for learning during her time as a student at UMBC. Now, an intern with the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education, she’s continued pursing that passion after graduation. Her current project is to develop a strategy to recruit and engage college students with the Maryland Scholars Speakers Bureau.

I believe it is our responsibility as members of the community to be directly involved in shaping the lives of our next generation.

Learn more about Yvette and find out how you can help.

The term “birth control” was first coined almost 100 years ago, and several laws and practices have changed over the last several years.  ABC 2 News recently published an article about the history of birth control in the United States and how it has evolved, and interviewed Gender and Women’s Studies Chair and Professor Carole McCann for the story.

“What you see is women struggling to find a means that works for them,” McCann said. She described how throughout much of the 20th century it was a violation of federal law to share information about contraceptives.

“We have a long history of women’s health needs being tied up with politics and sexual propriety,” McCann said. “That issue continues to plague the provision of women’s health care.”

The article examines several key dates over the history of birth control in the United States, including the 1965 U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut.

You can read the full article on the ABC 2 News website here.

The new Global Mapper SDK v15 features a new mathematical raster calculator, LiDAR analasys tools, 3D PDF read/write support and much more.

NeoLoad 4.2 is ideal for Agile Development as it Integrates seamlessly  with CI Jenkins and AppDynamics and now includes support for new technologies such as WebSocket & Push Module, HTTP Adaptive Streaming and more.

Kate Brown, Associate Professor of History, presented the Social Sciences Forum “Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters,” to a large audience Wednesday afternoon in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery.

Brown spoke about the plutonium disasters of the United States and Soviet Union, telling the stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia. They are the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. She described how American and Soviet leaders created plutopias, which are communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized atomic cities.

For many, living in these cities was like “winning the golden ticket,” Brown said because families could achieve great prosperity. She also told stories of many temporary workers forced to live outside these communities who often performed the most dangerous tasks. Because the communities were so secret, Brown said they did provide prosperity for many, but also concealed disasters that remain unstable to this day.

Kate Brown is author of A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland and Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters.