Free Republic

The 9th Circuit determined that forcibly mashing a suspect's thumb into his phone to unlock it was akin to fingerprinting him at the police station. JOE LANCASTER | 4.19.2024 12:50 PM As we keep more and more personal data on our phones, iPhone and Android devices now have some of the most advanced encryption technology in existence to keep that information safe from prying eyes. The easiest way around that, of course, is for someone to gain access to your phone. This week, a federal court decided that police officers can make you unlock your phone, even by physically forcing...

Rudy Giuliani assisted federal investigators in unlocking several electronic devices that had been seized from him by the FBI -- a move that could speed a decision from Southern District of New York prosecutors whether to charge the former New York City mayor and presidential candidate over his lobbying efforts in Ukraine, his attorney and sources familiar with the case told ABC News. The FBI seized more than a dozen devices from Giuliani's home and office during a search last April. A court-appointed special master has been reviewing the contents but had been slowed by the inability to access all...

It finally happened. The feds forced an Apple iPhone X owner to unlock their device with their face. A child abuse investigation unearthed by Forbes includes the first known case in which law enforcement used Apple Face ID facial recognition technology to open a suspect's iPhone. That's by any police agency anywhere in the world, not just in America. It happened on August 10, when the FBI searched the house of 28-year-old Grant Michalski, a Columbus, Ohio, resident who would later that month be charged with receiving and possessing child pornography. With a search warrant in hand, a federal investigator...

Xbox and developer The Coalition said Monday they will “unlock” the first four games in the Gears of War franchise for those who buy the $39.99 Gears of War:Ultimate Edition game or the related Gears of War: Ultimate Edition bundle for the Xbox One. All users will have to do to receive the games—the original Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3 and Gears of War: Judgment—will be to play the Ultimate Edition on Xbox Live sometime between Aug. 25 and Dec. 31, 2015, on Xbox Live. In addition, Microsoft said the four original Gears games...

A powerful new solar observatory will spend the next five years recording images of the sun with 10 times better resolution than HD television, peering deep within the sun's layers to reveal just how solar storms erupt. The observations could help scientists build the first effective models for space weather forecasting. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is slated for launch on Feb. 10 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. It carries three instruments that will pierce the mysteries enshrouding the sun's magnetic fields and ultraviolet radiation, which together help shape the Earth's atmosphere every day. "The unique...

TracFone Wireless Inc., the nation’s largest pre-paid wireless company, said it is considering filing suit in federal court to repeal a new Library of Congress rule exempting mobile phone locking software from U.S. copyright law. The ruling essentially allows an individual to unlock his or her cell phone from the wireless service that it was sold with, thereby allowing the phone to work on other carriers’ networks. Previously, unlocking a phone violated U.S. copyright law. “Although TracFone believes that the exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act … was not intended to apply to prepaid wireless service, we are nevertheless...

Spectacular brooch find may 'unlock secrets of Hadrian's Wall' Publisher: Jon Land Published: 17/05/2006 - 12:08:01 PM Hadrian's Wall A 'spectacular' small brooch has been uncovered at a Roman fort that may reveal secrets about the men that built Hadrian's Wall. The discovery of the legionary soldier's expensive and prestigious cloak brooch has excited archaeologists in Northumberland. Experts have discovered that the brooch belonged to soldier Quintus Sollonius who would have been stationed at the forefront of the Roman empire 2,000 years ago. Historians are continuing to examine the artefact and believe it could reveal more secrets behind the men...

Tools unlock secrets of early man By Mark Kinver Science reporter, BBC News website Researchers are confident the tools are 700,000 years old New research shows that early humans were living in Britain around 700,000 years ago, much earlier than scientists had previously thought. Using new dating techniques, scientists found that flint tools unearthed in Pakefield, Suffolk, were 200,000 years older than the previous oldest find. Humans were known to have lived in southern Europe 780,000 years ago but it was unclear when they moved north. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Nature. A team of scientists...

Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins of Ancient Languages The key to understanding how languages evolved may lie in their structure, not their vocabularies, a new report suggests. Findings published today in the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages more than 10,000 years old. Because vocabularies change so quickly, using them to trace how languages evolve over time can only reach back about 8,000 to 10,000 years. To study tongues from the Pleistocene, the period between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago, Michael Dunn and his colleagues...

Ice cores unlock climate secrets By Julianna Kettlewell BBC News Online science staff Tiny bubbles of ancient air are locked in the ice Global climate patterns stretching back 740,000 years have been confirmed by a three kilometre long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, Nature reports. Analysis of the ice proves our planet has had eight Ice Ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today. If past patterns are followed in the future, we can expect our "mild snap" to last another 15,000 years. The data may also help predict how...

Muons May Unlock Secrets of Teotihuacan If tombs are discovered in the Pyramid of the Sun, they could shed light on the governing style in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Mexico. Does the Pyramid of the Sun harbor any tombs? What might such tombs reveal about the society that two millennia ago built one of Mesoamerica's largest pyramids? In an experiment à la Luis Alvarez, who in the late 1960s concluded that there are no tombs in Egypt's Chephren pyramid, a collaboration of physicists and archaeologists hopes to glean answers to these questions by monitoring the passage of muons through...

Ancient corncobs unlock riddle By MIKE TONER The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Prehistoric populations in the American Southwest transported corn over long distances -- and used networks of "farm to market" roads that enabled them to support large cities in areas that were unsuitable for agriculture. New studies of ancient corncobs show that large urban complexes like Chaco Canyon that thrived a thousand years ago in New Mexico imported corn from fertile farmlands that were 50 miles or more from major population centers. Archaeologists have long wondered how the sophisticated Chaco civilization, which built huge multistory dwellings in the high desert of...