Secret agents raid Apple store webcam 'artist' - BBC News

8 July 2011 Last updated at 10:54 ET The US Secret Service has raided the home of an artist who collected images from webcams in a New York Apple store.

Kyle McDonald is said to have installed software that photographed people looking at laptops then uploaded the pictures to a website.

Mr McDonald said he had obtained permission from a security guard to take photos inside the store.

Apple declined to comment. However, the Secret Service confirmed that its electronic crime division was involved.

A spokesperson told the BBC that the investigation was taking place under US Code Title 18 /1030 which relates to "Fraud and related activity in connection with computers."

Offences covered by the legislation carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Writing on Twitter, Mr McDonald said: "@secretservice just stopped by to investigate [web address removed] and took my laptop. Please assume they're reading any e-mails you send me."

No arrests had been made in the case as of 8 July.

Staring

Kyle McDonald's images were uploaded to a page on the blogging site Tumblr.

In the description of People Staring at Computers, the project is described as: "A photographic intervention. Custom app installed around NYC, taking a picture every minute and uploading it if a face is found in the image.

"Exhibited on site with a remotely triggered app that displayed the photos full screen on every available computer."

The site features a video and series of photographs, apparently showing shoppers trying-out computers.

Comments on the individuals by visitors to the site are also attached to the images.

Mr McDonald, writing on Twitter, said that he had been advised not to comment on the case by the online freedom group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

View the original article here

Swatch From Apollo 11 Moon-Bound Flag Goes to Auction - Fox News

It was one small step for man. Now one small strip from the famed flag planted on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission is set to go to auction.

"This is the most-viewed flag in American history," said Michael Orenstein, whose west Los Angeles auction house is handling the Sunday sale that features a piece of fabric shorn from the banner as it was being prepared for the world's first lunar landing.

Other items on the block include one of the Collier trophies -- the so-called Oscar of aviation -- that was awarded to the crew of 1962's Mercury 7 mission and a three-ring notebook used by "Deke" Slayton as he trained to be one of the space program's first astronauts.

But Orenstein said the sale's gem is the seven-inch strip of red and white fabric being auctioned along with a photo bearing Neil Armstrong's autograph on consignment by Tom Moser, the retired NASA engineer who was tasked with designing the moon-bound flag in the weeks before Apollo 11's 1969 launch.

"It's right up there with Betsy Ross and the Star Spangled Banner," Orenstein said.
NASA's original plans didn't involve planting a flag on the moon because of a United Nations treaty prohibiting nations from claiming celestial entities as their own, Moser said.

But after Congress slipped language into an appropriations bill authorizing the flag's placement as a non-territorial marker, Moser was told to design a flag that could survive the trip to the moon and be planted on its surface upon arrival.

With the spacecraft's tiny interior too cramped even for a rolled-up flag, Moser devised a way to fix an aluminum tube with a thermal liner for the banner on the outside of the vessel, he said.

NASA staff bought an American flag off the shelf of a nearby store and Moser had a hem sewn along its top, so a telescoping aluminum rod could be inserted to hold the banner out straight on the gravity-free moon. (On the moon, the rod didn't extend its full length; the consequent bunching is what makes the flag look like it's blowing in the wind.)

Meanwhile, a strip of fabric along the flag's left side was cut to remove a set of grommets, Moser said.

"It was put in the trash can and I just took it out and said, `I'm going to keep that,"' he said.

Moser said he had Neil Armstrong sign a photo of the flag planted on the moon when the astronaut returned to Earth and he kept the picture and his rescued scrap of flag together in his NASA office until he retired in 1990.

But after hanging onto the photo and flag-swatch assemblage all these years, he finally decided to put them up to auction, although he said he'll miss owning what he sees as a piece of history.

Orenstein said he expects the flag remnant and photo to fetch $100,000 to $150,000 and possibly much more.

"How do you price something like this?" Orenstein said. "If people recognize it for what it is or appreciate it for with it is, it can just keep going up."

Some space scholars, however, appear unimpressed with the artifact.

Since the remnant itself was never launched, its connection to the moon-bound banner has little significance, said Louis Parker, exhibits manager at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

"That doesn't give it any more importance than any other piece of fabric that was here on Earth," he said.

But Moser insisted that the piece does indeed have value, since it represents the beginning of an era of space exploration that now has an uncertain future as the space shuttle makes its final voyage.

"The flag is the icon of the whole accomplishment of the United States being first to the moon and of a great accomplishment for mankind," he said. "Being part of that icon, it has a special meaning."

View the original article here

Independent South Sudan "free at last" - Reuters

A man dances with fireworks during South Sudan's independence day celebrations in Juba July 9, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

By Alexander Dziadosz and Jeremy Clarke

JUBA | Sun Jul 10, 2011 11:25am EDT

JUBA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of South Sudanese danced and cheered as their new nation declared independence on Saturday, a hard-won separation from the north that still leaves simmering issues of disputed borders and oil payments unresolved.

The president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, stood next to his old civil war foe the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who now leads just the north, at a ceremony to mark the birth of the new nation.

Under-developed, oil-producing South Sudan won its independence in a January referendum -- the climax of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of fighting with the north.

Security forces at first tried to control the streets in the south's dusty capital Juba, but retreated as jubilant crowds moved in overnight and through the day, waving flags, dancing and chanting "South Sudan o-yei, freedom o-yei."

Some revelers fainted in the blistering heat as South Sudan's parliamentary speaker, James Wani Igga, read out the formal declaration of independence.

"We, the democratically elected representatives of the people ... hereby declare Southern Sudan to be an independent and sovereign state," said Igga before Sudan's flag was lowered, the South Sudan flag was raised and the new anthem sung. Kiir took the oath of office.

People threw their hands in the air, embraced and wept. "We got it. We got it," one man said as he hugged a woman.

The presence of Bashir, who campaigned to keep Africa's largest state united, was a key gesture of goodwill.

It will also be an embarrassment to some Western diplomats at the event. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Bashir on charges of war crimes in Darfur.

Bashir gave a speech congratulating the new country. "The will of the people of the south has to be respected," he said, adding that both states had to maintain peace.

RECOGNITION

North Sudan's government was the first to recognize South Sudan on Friday, hours before the split took place, a move that smoothed the way to the division.

The United States, China and Britain signaled their recognition of the state on Saturday, according to official statements and government media reports.

"After so much struggle by the people of South Sudan, the United States of America welcomes the birth of a new nation," said U.S. President Barack Obama, stopping short of announcing any immediate changes in longstanding U.S. sanctions on Sudan that Khartoum has been hoping will be lifted.

Dignitaries including U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the leaders of about 30 African nations attended.

In a possible sign of the South's new allegiances, the crowd included about 200 supporters of Darfur rebel leader Abdel Wahed al-Nur, fighting Khartoum in an eight-year insurgency just over South Sudan's border in the north.

Earlier, the supporters of Nur's rebel Sudan Liberation Army faction stood in a line chanting "Welcome, welcome new state," wearing T-shirts bearing their leader's image. One carried a banner reading "El Bashir is wanted dead or alive."

Traditional dance groups drummed and waved shields and staffs in a carnival atmosphere.

"Free at last," said Simon Agany, 34, as he walked around shaking hands after midnight -- the time when officials said the South actually became the world's newest nation.

The crowd cheered as Kiir unveiled a giant statue of civil war hero John Garang, who signed the peace deal with the north.

Kiir offered an amnesty to rebels fighting his government and promised to bring peace to troubled border areas.

"I would like to take this opportunity to declare amnesty for all those who have taken up arms against Sudan," he said.

"I want to assure the people of Abyei, Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan that we have not forgotten you. When you cry, we cry. When you bleed, we bleed. I pledge to you today that we will find a just peace for all," he said.

SEEDS OF FUTURE TENSION

Khartoum's recognition of the South did not dispel fears of future tensions.

Northern and southern leaders have still not agreed on a list of issues, most importantly the line of the border, the ownership of the disputed Abyei region and how they will handle oil revenues, the lifeblood of both economies.

At the stroke of midnight the Republic of Sudan lost almost a third of its territory and about three quarters of its oil reserves, which are sited in the south. It faced the future with insurgencies in its Darfur and Southern Kordofan regions.

In Khartoum on Saturday, one sign of the new national order was the disappearance of some English-language and SPLM-linked newspapers. The north said it suspended them on Friday as they were published or owned by southerners -- an ominous signal for more than 1 million southerners left in the north.

Many northerners see the separation as a loss of face.

Analysts have long feared a return to war if north-south disputes are not resolved.

Mostly Muslim Sudan fought rebels in the south, where most follow Christianity and traditional beliefs, for all but a few years from the 1950s in civil wars fueled by ethnicity, religion, oil and ideology.

(Additional reporting by Ulf Laessing, Andrew Heavens and Khaled Abdelaziz in Khartoum and Megan Davies at the United Nations; Writing by Andrew Heavens; Editing by Tim Pearce)

View the original article here