house

Forget texting or driving with Google Glass. A petition on the WhiteHouse.gov "We The People" site is going after the true menace behind the wheel -- men.

Full disclosure: I'm also a man, and have been for nearly 15 years in the eyes of the law (although according to certain cultural traditions, I've got more like 13 years of official manhood under my belt, and folks who know me well tell me I'll never actually achieve the title).

The official demand of the petition is to "Prohibit Straight Men From Driving," although there's also a reference to include "men of other sexual orientations who are attracted to women" under the proposed ban.… Read more

The crowd has Edward Snowden's back, but will it be a big enough posse to keep him out of hot water with the federal government?

With revelations this past week that the National Security Agency has been surveying all sorts of electronic communications in a sort of involuntary crowdsourcing campaign, perhaps it's not surprising that the crowd is now coming to the aid of the whistleblower who revealed the NSA's classified surveillance program called PRISM.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper insists that PRISM, which allegedly gives the NSA some degree of access to data passing though Internet companies in the U.S., is lawful and authorized by Congress. He called the leak "reckless."… Read more

Update, June 8 at 2:45 p.m. PT: In response to outcry over PRISM, the U.S. director of national intelligence has released some details. Among other things, he says the government "does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers" and that PRISM-related activities are conducted "under court supervision." More here.

The National Security Agency has not obtained direct access to the systems of Apple, Google, Facebook, and other major Internet companies, CNET has learned.

Recent reports in The Washington Post and The Guardian claimed a classified program … Read more

President Obama offered a lawyerly defense of the National Security Agency this morning that can be summarized in two words: Trust us.

"The people involved in America's national security they take this work very seriously," he said. "The last thing they'd be doing is taking programs like this to listen to people's phone calls."

The president, whose administration has been buffeted by a series of disclosures in the last two days about warrantless NSA surveillance, was supposed to be speaking to reporters in the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif., about health care. … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Weird Al Yankovic says next album will be his last.

- Australian scientists uncover "God's bathtub."

- These Blu-ray discs will last 1,000 years.

- You guys, Xanga is about to shut down unless we give them $60k.

- This teenager would rather go to jail than play his Xbox 360.… Read more

The White House is defending the decision to collect the telephone records of U.S. citizens by labeling it an anti-terrorist measure.

The move by the National Security Agency to gather the phone records of Verizon customers was revealed on Wednesday by U.K. newspaper The Guardian. A court's top-secret order forced Verizon to hand over information about domestic and overseas calls "on an ongoing daily basis."

The court order, which can be seen on The Guardian's Web site, forces Verizon to release all call details or "telephony metadata" created by the carrier for … Read more

In a further attempt to ease national security concerns over its proposed acquisition of Sprint, Japan-based SoftBank has agreed to give the U.S. government the right to approve one of the members SoftBank would appoint to Sprint's board of directors, according to a report.

The U.S.-approved board member would make sure a SoftBank-owned Sprint honored whatever security agreement is hammered out with U.S. regulators, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.

Regulators are also seeking oversight of Sprint's network equipment purchases to prevent gear from Chinese suppliers Huawei Technologies and ZTE … Read more

You thought it had been settled, didn't you?

You've been practicing the new pronunciation (or the old one).

And now you're going to have to think again.

Recently, the White House very presciently decided to open its own non-purple Tumblr account. It took the occasion to declare with seeming finality that GIFs -- those very files that so many people find funny -- are hard, not soft.

Hard as in hard "g." Gif like "gift." Not like "jiffy."

Some giffers fell in line. Now they will have second thoughts. For the … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don't need a search warrant to review Americans' e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files, internal documents reveal.

Government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET show a split over electronic privacy rights within the Obama administration, with Justice Department prosecutors and investigators privately insisting they're not legally required to obtain search warrants for e-mail. The IRS, on the other hand, publicly said last month that it would abandon a controversial policy that claimed it could get warrantless access … Read more