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Illinois lawmakers are close to banning — or partially banning — new versions of some of the most popular products on any convenience store shelf. The Illinois state Senate is poised to vote on two proposed laws outlawing powdered alcohol, often called Palcohol, and powdered caffeine. Chicago Democrat Ira Silverstein is pushing the powdered alcohol ban, and the proposal cleared a legislative committee last week. Illinois Watchdog reached out to Silverstein, but he did not immediately return our calls. Silverstein has said, however, that he's afraid for young people. "It's the type of item that can be sprinkled on food...

We now live in a world where NSA, Google, Facebook and Twitter don’t catch ISIS, they catch us instead By the time self-acclaimed whistleblower Edward Snowden blew the cover on the National Security Agency (NSA) forever more known as ‘Spies are Us’, it was already way too late for the privacy of online online private citizens. Privacy, like commonsense and government altruism, doesn’t live here anymore. Before NSA, we were already big-time data-based with every nuance and details of our private lives spied upon and standby stored by Google, FaceBook and other unsavory social networks on the take. Blowback from...

A driver of a vehicle tried to ram a gate at the National Security Agency building in Fort Meade Monday morning, resulting in a shooting, authorities say. It is not clear if anyone has been injured. There are two vehicles with damage outside the gate. Anne Arundel County police say the National Security Agency is handling the investigation, WUSA9 reports. The incident happened around 9:30 a.m. local time.

Police opened fire on a vehicle that attempted to ram the gates at the National Security Agency, according to multiple media reports. It is unclear if there are any injuries. This a breaking news story and will be updated as more information comes available. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/30/police-shoot-vehicle-ramming-nsa-gates-ft-meade-re/#ixzz3VsXmFSU4 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

The project was awarded this month to Rutgers University, which has received $117,102 so far. The real-time, automatic detection of hurtful online speech is necessary, according to the NSF grant, because cyberbullying is a “critical social problem.” The grant said 40 percent of American teenagers have reported being cyberbullied. ... Vivek K. Singh, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, is leading the project. “I have worked on multiple projects including designing a novel media sharing application, detecting patterns in large scale Twitter feeds, and analyzing community behavior in social media to design...

MSNBC correspondent Jeremy Lancaster sat down with government official Darrin Cornia to discuss recent rumors that have been in circulation in regard to registered motorcycle owners being placed on a classified FBI gang list. After a few moments of introduction, Lancaster bluntly asked the following question,” Mr. Cornia, if I were to make the statement, all registered motorcycle owners are currently showing on a classified FBI gang list, would the statement be true or false? Cornia responded by saying, “That would be a true statement, the FBI has been collecting and compiling Department of Motor Vehicles and Drivers License Division...

Most of the likely Republican presidential candidates are supportive of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. But Americans who identify as Republican or lean that way appear to disagree. That’s according to a new survey from Pew Research, released on Monday, gauging post-Snowden attitudes on digital privacy and surveillance. Of respondents who were familiar with the NSA spying revelations, 70 percent of Republicans and those leaning Republican said they were losing confidence that the agency’s surveillance programs served the public interest. Just 55 percent of Democrats and those leaning Democratic said they had lost faith.... But the strong majority of...

The superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey has confirmed that she sent an email to fellow superintendents Tuesday about her concern that education publishing giant Pearson is “monitoring” children’s social media accounts for possible leaks about the Common Core-aligned PARCC tests.

DENVER — Within an hour of FOX31 Denver discovering a hidden camera, which was positioned to capture and record the license plates and facial features of customers leaving a Golden Post Office, the device was ripped from the ground and disappeared.FOX31 Denver investigative reporter Chris Halsne confirmed the hidden camera and recorder is owned and operated by the United State Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement branch of the U.S. Postal Service.The recording device appeared to be tripped by any vehicle leaving the property on Johnson Road, but the lens was not positioned to capture images of the front door,...

The federal government helped finance the creation of a so-called “diet choker” that monitors the eating habits of the wearer.WearSens, created by engineers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), is a necklace that can automatically detect when a person is eating or smoking, and can send alerts to a smart phone telling the user to stop.The invention received a $148,379 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2013 to create a sensory necklace to “fill the need of automatically detecting swallows and eating patterns.”Researchers at UCLA, led by Majid Sarrafzadeh, the director of the Embedded and Reconfigurable...

With EVs and other fuel-efficient vehicles saving consumers money at the pump, Oregon will be the first to issue a per-mile road tax to refill its coffers. Automotive News reports the state will offer two options to its motorists: pay at the pump, or pay a 1.5-cent rate per mile traversed. The latter will be conducted through a device that plugs into a vehicle’s OBD port, then gathers mileage data to determine how much the motorist will pay in tax. Right now, the program — set to begin July 1 — will be implemented by the Oregon DOT in partnership...

The Los Angeles Police Department began exploring the deterrent approach a few years ago with a new model called predictive policing that deployed officers and patrol cars to areas where data suggested crime was more likely to occur. Criminologists say the use of helicopters is a natural, if highly unusual, expansion of that policing strategy. So far, LAPD officials say, the stats show the strategy is having a positive effect. Months of data show that the number of serious crimes reported in the LAPD's Newton Division in South L.A. fell during weeks when the helicopters conducted more flights.

Can you imagine a world where your home, your vehicles, your appliances and every single electronic device that you own is constantly connected to the Internet? This is not some grand vision that is being planned for some day in the future. This is something that is being systematically implemented right now. In 2015, we already have “smart homes”, vehicles that talk to one another, refrigerators that are connected to the Internet, and televisions that spy on us. Our world is becoming increasingly interconnected, and that opens up some wonderful possibilities. But there is also a downside. What if we...

While childhood vaccination rates are well over 90%, adults are far more likely to be behind on vaccinations http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/national_adult_immunization_plan_final.pdf Think you're up to date on your vaccinations? You might be surprised at how many vaccinations are now recommended for American adults -- and the federal government plans to start tracking which of those vaccines you're behind on. The Department of Health and Human Services released its preliminary draft of a new five year plan to increase adult vaccinations this month. The newly revised 52-page National Adult Immunization Plan says: While the NVP provides a vision for improving protection from vaccine-preventable...

Unfortunately, privacy as we once knew it is dead. “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984 None of us are perfect. All of us bend the rules occasionally. Even before the age of overcriminalization, when the most upstanding citizen could be counted on to break at least three laws a day without knowing it, most of us have knowingly flouted the law from time to time.Indeed, there was a time when most Americans thought nothing of driving a few...

DENVER — Colorado already is being sued by two neighboring states for legalizing marijuana. Now, the state faces groundbreaking lawsuits from its own residents, who are asking a federal judge to order the new recreational industry to close. The owners of a mountain hotel and a southern Colorado horse farm argue in a pair of lawsuits filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver that the 2012 marijuana-legalization measure has hurt their property and that the marijuana industry is stinky and attracts unsavory visitors.

President Obama talked a surprising amount of common sense on his trip last week to Silicon Valley, where he spoke at a "cybersecurity" gathering at Stanford University. But he undermined some noteworthy remarks about strong encryption--we need it, he said--with the kind of fear-monger hedging that has become almost every politician's refuge from telling the hard truth.... The first was Obama's clear statement that he, personally, favors ubiquitous strong encryption. He thinks everyone should use it but hedges that by saying law enforcement needs a way to break into communications and data.... [W]e need leaders who'll tell the truth--that we...

Sam Andrew, a founding member and guitarist of the San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, died Thursday in San Rafael. He was 73. His death, of complications from open-heart surgery after a heart attack, was confirmed by John Byrne Cooke, a friend and former manager... Big Brother served as the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, which was run by band manager Chet Helms before recruiting Joplin and gaining international attention with their explosive performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. “She walked in one day and started singing some songs,” Mr. Andrew said...

A state-level bureaucrat is standing up to the the central government planners is a most unusual way. Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, Diane Douglas, has informed all school districts in the Grand Canyon State that they have blanket authority to ignore all federal nutrition mandates regulating school fundraisers. "Forcing parents and other supporters of schools to only offer federally approved food and snacks at fundraisers is a perfect example of the overreach of government and intrusion into local control," Douglas said in a statement. "I have ordered effective immediately, that the ADE Health and Nutrition Services division grant exemptions for...

Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV Right: 1984