Deutsche Telekom Pitches NSA-Free German Internet

Encryption protocols will get tighter as a result of the NSA's spying, but "there are enough people who want to preserve the good and open aspects of the Internet that segmentation and firewall efforts will eventually fail," suggested Xmission's Pete Ashdown. Indeed, "the very people you try to restrict will likely be the ones that find a way around the wall,' said Tirias Research analyst Jim McGregor.

Germany might go off the global Internet in response to the United States National Security Agency's recently uncovered surveillance activities.

Instead, German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, whose motto is "Life Is for Sharing," has proposed a national routing scheme that would see all data packets -- including emails -- transmitted only within the country's borders, WirtschaftsWoche recently reported.

In particular, data packets would no longer go through discredited nodes in the U.S. and the UK.

The proposal was reportedly presented at Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics and Business on Oct. 1. Implementation would require support from foreign carriers such as Vodafone and Telefonica, which are apparently studying the proposal.

In light of technical and legal hurdles to the idea, DT has reportedly suggested that Germany pass a law making the national routing scheme mandatory.

DT's proposal is an outgrowth of an encrypted email service, "Email Made in Germany," launched in August by the company's T-Online division with two other major German email providers: GMX and Web.de.

Iran proposed a similar move back in 2011, and Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff is pushing legislation to force Internet companies such as Google and Facebook to store local data within Brazil's borders.

Rousseff also wants to construct submarine cables that do not route through the U.S.; build Internet exchange points in Brazil; and create an encrypted email service through the country's postal service.

DT can set up a local Internet in Germany, Pete Ashdown, founder and CEO of Xmission, told TechNewsWorld.

It would need its own root DNS servers and its own designs for address allocation as well as a protocol to hand off traffic to the Internet at large, Ashdown said.

However, such a venture would also require government funding and the network would require maintenance and -- possibly -- monitoring "in the form of deep packet inspection just to ensure network efficiency," Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research, pointed out.

Heavy rain batters Andhra Pradesh, thousands evacuated

HYDERABAD: Heavy rain triggered by northeast monsoon and a low pressure area over Bay of Bengal lashed several parts of Andhra Pradesh for the fourth consecutive day on Friday, prompting authorities to evacuate thousands of people from low-lying areas.

Low lying areas continued to remain under water in number of towns and villages, particularly in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema.

Hundreds of houses have been damaged due to the rainfall, rendering many people homeless.Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes and shifted to emergency relief camps.

The rain has claimed over ten lives and crops over a vast area of land has been destroyed.

"The situation is very grim as the entire delta area is completely inundated. Drains and tanks are overflowing and there is a threat of breaches occurring at some places because of the nonstop rain," Guntur district collector S Suresh Kumar told PTI over phone.

In Guntur district, 36 relief camps have been opened for 11,000 people who were evacuated from rain-ravaged villages, he said.

Six lift-irrigation scheme workers, who were stuck in flood at Chilakaluripet and Yedlapadu since Thursday, were rescued on Friday with the help of National Disaster Response Force personnel, the collector said.

River Krishna is in spate with a heavy inflow of floodwater.

Consequently, 70 crest gates were lifted at Prakasam Barrage in Vijayawada to discharge 1.18 lakh cusecs of water into the Bay of Bengal.

In Srikakulam district in north coastal Andhra, more than 45,000 people have been shifted to relief camps as heavy rain continues to lash the district.

Several rivers including Vamsasadhara and Bahuda in north coastal Andhra and rivulets were in spate at many other places.

The rain has disrupted buses and train services in north coastal Andhra.

Hyderabad and various parts of Telangana also received heavy rainfall for the last few days, which led to water logging on roads and also several residential colonies.

The heavy downpour and waterlogging resulted in massive traffic jams making it difficult for vehicle drivers to find their way through.

As the railway track at Golantri remained under a sheet of two-feet of water, train services between Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar were cancelled.

In East Godavari district, headquarters town Kakinada remained submerged, throwing life out of gear.

Incessant rain have also left Hyderabad-Secunderabad twin cities battered.

Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy spoke to the collectors of Srikakulam, Prakasam, Guntur and others districts late on Thursday night and directed them to give top priority to rescue operations, shifting people to safer places and organizing other relief measures, official sources said here on Friday.

He directed the officials to help the farmers and take steps to strengthen bunds of tanks and other water bodies.

The CM also asked the chief secretary to coordinate with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) police, fire and other emergency personnel in rescue and relief operations.

9 GREAT Ideas for Android applications...

Hi,

after thinking a little about android and new handsets, I came up with the following ideas for applications. If you are a developer and like an idea, go for it!

1) Handset Theft Monitoring

- This application sends the GPS-position of the device up to an internet portal. The last 2/4/6/24 hours are recorded. In case of a theft of the device, you can view where it was stolen and where the device is/was.


2) Emergency Call (inkl. Video & Audio)

- This is an application that you activate before you might get into an emergency situation (i.e. before walking alone through a tunnel). Then you have to press a button (or a finger on the screen...) and as soon as you lift the finger from that button/screen, the device will send an emergency call to a friend/the police and send the current position, sound and video to another device or to an internet portal.

3) Geo Profile (similar to Locale by Clare Bayley, Carter Jernigan, Christina Wright, Jasper
Lin)
-Call Filter

White list/ Black list certain contacts from contacting you via (phone / VoIP / IM / SMS) depending on your current location.

-Ring tone

Set the ring tone depending on your current location and the person calling.

-Individual message for answering machine

Set an individual message for different locations.

-Messaging status

Set the messaging status automatically, depending on your current location.


4) Display Location when calling


- This application would be started everytime there is an incoming call. If another android user is calling, then the other phone could transfer the current position (or situation, like "at work" or "at home",...) to the phone being called. That way, the incoming call could be announced as "Girlfriend calling from work".


5) Tool to announce arrival

- This application would be activated by a calendar entry, showing that the phone user has an appointment somewhere (i.e. meeting friends in a town 2 hours away). The application would track the phones position and register that the user is on his way to the appointment (by checking if the user is following the route of google maps to the destination). The phone would keep a status of whether the phone owner will arrive on time or be late. As soon as the user is on his way, the people being visited can check anytime if their friend will arrive on time (communication between the devices via a webpage or IM).

6) 24h tracking

- This application would track your positions constantly and save them on a well secured webpage. That way you can later go back to a specific day and find out where you were or view the pictures you took that day and follow the street where you took them. You could add text to certain time stamps or locations and keep a "log" of your life.

7) Product Wiki (similar to AndroidScan by Jeffrey Sharkey)
This application would require as input a unique identifyer of a product, i.e. an EAN Number/barcode. This would be used to lookup information about the product/the producing company on a publicly available "product wiki".
The application would then run the items information through your personal filter and return relevant information to the user,i.e.
- the item is produced using child labour
- the item is produced 100% in your home country
- the item contains gene food
- the item contains nuts (which you might be allergic against)
-...

8) Delivery announcement / authorize strangers to localize you

- This application would need to be closely linked to a web service. You would register with your postal address and link it to your account with that service. After that everyone can request, only by providing your postal address, other contact details of you (i.e. Phone number, IM user,...) or send you a message or request.
This could be used to keep your contact's contact details up to date or would be very helpfull for deliverys to your home. The logistics company (i.e. DHL) could ask via your address, if someone will be at home between 11am and 1 pm. This way the routes could be optimized, you would get your shipment quicker and the logistics company saves cost.


9) Swich connection dynamically

If two users try to contact each other, the phones could check in the background (via am IM connection for example) the preferred contact channel. So when you try to call a friend, the phones could automatically switch to a SIP/VoIP Connection, if both are in reach of a WiFi network, or the IM client could pop up, because the called person is in a meeting, not able to take the phone.

Apple announces new version of iLife for OS X Mavericks and iOS, available today

Every three years around this time, Apple comes out with a new version of iLife. So, given that the current suite was launched back in 2010, we had an inkling today we'd be getting an update today at Apple's press event. Sure enough, the company just unveiled new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band, with fresh software for both iOS and OS X Mavericks on the desktop side. All told, the apps usher in not just a cleaner, stripped-down design, but upgraded performance, too: like all the native applications that come pre-installed on iOS 7, the new iLife programs are 64-bit.

In terms of the individual apps and what you can actually do with them, iPhoto now allows you to create Photobooks on the iPad. iMovie, meanwhile, lets you change speed the speed of the video; if you're on iOS, you can do picture-in-picture as well. Additionally, a new feature called iMovie Theater (yes, that's a real name) allows you to watch all of your videos on any device -- iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, whatever -- so long as your movies are stored in iCloud.

At least six killed as bomb hits Pakistan passenger train: Officials

QUETTA, Pakistan: A bomb hit a passenger train in Pakistan's restive southwest on Monday, killing at least six people and wounding more than 17 others, officials said.

The device, apparently planted on the railway track, exploded when the train approached a station in Naseer Abad district of the insurgency hit southwestern Baluchistan province.

"It was a bomb blast, the target was the passenger train. At least six people have been killed," Asad Gilani, provincial home secretary said, adding that more than 17 others were wounded in the blast.