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The National Security Agency is scaling back the way it spies on some communications over the Internet.

The NSA says it discovered what it called "lapses" in compliance with U.S. law.

They're called "about" communications: The NSA not only watches messages traveling to and from a foreign target, but those that mention one.

That can mean the NSA sometimes sweeps up data from Americans without a warrant. In the past, officials said the spy agency was still mindful of citizens' privacy.

But now NSA says it has discovered "several inadvertent compliance lapses," which it reported to Congress and a secret court that oversees intelligence gathering.

There aren't many more details, but the NSA now says it will, quote, "stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target."

Here's the full statement from the NSA:

NSA Stops Certain Foreign Intelligence Collection Activities Under Section 702

The National Security Agency is instituting several changes in the way it collects information under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Section 702, set to expire at the end of this year, allows the Intelligence Community to conduct surveillance on only specific foreign targets located outside the United States to collect foreign intelligence, including intelligence needed in the fight against international terrorism and cyber threats.

NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target. This information is referred to in the Intelligence Community as "about" communications in Section 702 "upstream" internet surveillance. Instead, NSA will limit such collection to internet communications that are sent directly to or from a foreign target.

Even though NSA does not have the ability at this time to stop collecting "about" information without losing some other important data, the Agency will stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target.

Finally, even though the Agency was legally allowed to retain such "about" information previously collected under Section 702, the NSA will delete the vast majority of its upstream internet data to further protect the privacy of U.S. person communications.

The changes in policy followed an in-house review of Section 702 activities in which NSA discovered several inadvertent compliance lapses.

NSA self-reported the incidents to both Congress and the FISC, as it is required to do. Following these reports, the FISC issued two extensions as NSA worked to fix the problems before the government submitted a new application for continued Section 702 certification. The FISC recently approved the changes after an extensive review.

The Agency's efforts are part of its commitment to continuous improvement as we work to keep the nation safe. NSA has a solemn responsibility and duty to do our work exactly right while carrying out our critical mission.

Go here to see the original:
NSA To Limit Some Collection Of Internet Communication - KUCB

The NSA Says It Is Ending One of Its Most Controversial Spying Practices, But It Could Be Resurrected if Congress ... Common Dreams The NSA indicated Friday that it will halt one of its most controversial spying practices, related to its surveillance of virtually all text-based communications entering or exiting the United States. If true, this is a significant step forward in the ...

Excerpt from:
The NSA Says It Is Ending One of Its Most Controversial Spying Practices, But It Could Be Resurrected if Congress ... - Common Dreams

Mashable

Snowden takes a bow for whistleblowing after NSA pulls back surveillance Mashable Before Friday, the NSA had a policy of sucking up texts and emails exchanged between Americans and people outside the U.S., with impunity, if those communications even mentioned non-American targets of NSA surveillance. The agency did not require a ...

Go here to read the rest:
Snowden takes a bow for whistleblowing after NSA pulls back surveillance - Mashable

FAIRMONT After applying for the grant in November 2016, Fairmont City Council has received $10,000 for the development of geographic information system (GIS) software.

City Manager Robin Gomez announced the grant acceptance at Tuesdays City Council meeting by presenting a large novelty check.

The software works by combining data and maps of Fairmont. Gomez said that while the technology has many uses, the city will use it to identify and establish historic resources in structures around town.

It will allow us to have more data, allow us to more easily analyze the locations and what we would be able to do with historic structures, Gomez said. It will help us with marketing certain structures like the Masonic Temple and help get a developer in there. Theres all sorts of possibilities that go with the GIS system, but our approach, since the grant is through the state Historic Preservation Office, is were identifying historic structures.

Gomez said that while identifying and mapping historic structures is the primary goal, the city will also use the software to map out other specifics for the city.

We can add more data, such as all those different code enforcement cases and kind of where we have vacant properties, Gomez said. We can track where we have properties that the city owns that we would be looking to have redeveloped. It allows us to identify all fire hydrants throughout the city.

Worldwide, GIS software is used for a wide variety of historic, environmental and social purposes. For example, the software can be used to find which wetlands are most at risk by comparing their location on a map to heavy pollution sources. It can also be used to track animal migration patterns, as well as help businesses find a location for a new store.

While perhaps less relevant to Fairmont, GIS software also can help officials prepare natural disaster response and evacuation plans by identifying neighborhoods most at risk, escape routes and good location for shelters.

The software can also be used to study statistical trends, allowing cities to track such things as crime rates and precipitation rates over months and years, provided they have the required data.

Once the GIS software is implemented, the city will be able to easily update its maps going forward, Gomez said.

With the new technology and data, city officials will be able to make the best decisions in the future for a better Fairmont, he said.

Its just an endless amount of data that can be in one location that allows us to analyze and make better-informed decisions, Gomez said.

The rest is here:
Fairmont awarded GIS software grant - The Exponent Telegram (press release) (registration)

Chemical groups are defined by the spatial arrangement and bonding of multiple of atoms in space, but these atoms are proximate to each other. When chemical groups interact, e.g. through hydrogen bonding or -bond stacking, the strength of their repulsion or attraction may vary with their type, distance, and angle, but these are predominantly local effects. More complex bioactivity features may be described by considering neighboring groups that strengthen or attenuate a given interaction but, because even in these cases distant atoms rarely affect each other, the enforced locality of a DCNN is appropriate. Additionally, as with edge detectors in DCNNs for images, the applicability of a detector for e.g., hydrogen bonding or -bond stacking, is invariant across the receptive field. These local biochemical interaction detectors may then be hierarchically composed into more intricate features describing the complex and nonlinear phenomenon of molecular binding.

Now, I have no problem with the local bonding calculations that theyre talking about doing, although theyre subject to the usual disclaimers about the accuracy of the calculations. But the assumption that "distant atoms rarely affect each other" does not seem to me to be valid. Medicinal chemists are quite used to seeing changes in a structure-activity relationship when a reasonably distant atom is changed "You can get away with a methyl there as long as you dont have one over there". There are SARs that do work on the "greatest hits" principle, where you can independently mix-and-match various regions of the molecule, but the great majority of the projects Ive worked on havent gone that way, or not quite. And if Im interpreting that paragraph correctly, its explicitly aimed at the mix-and-match. Id say that the most common situation is the one where you can get away with independent changes within a given range, which can be a rather narrow one, and then all bets are off. And the only way to discover that youve gone outside those ranges is to go outside them.

As mentioned, AtomNet, to its credit, also brings in data about the binding target. But thats a tricky business, too. As is well known, binding sites accommodate ligands by adjusting their own shapes sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically and this is one of the hardest things to account for in virtual screening techniques. Likewise, the ligands themselves can adopt a range of conformations in response to a binding event, which also adds to the computational burden. Im not at all sure how this software deals with these problems, particularly the protein mobility one, but if I come across more details, Ill update this post.

From what I can see, the AIM program is screening databases of commercial compounds and furnishing the applicants with the 72 best purchasable hits. The compounds will be given an LC/MS quality check diluted to an appropriate concentration, and plated out, which is a good service. "Custom-chosen", though, does not mean "custom-synthesized", as youd imagine (I dont think anyone will be taking that on for free). Theyre asking that people come to them, ideally, with targets that have an X-ray protein structure and an identified small-molecule binding site, which is fair enough.

I would very much like to know what the hit rates will be for these, and I suspect that AtomWise very much wants to know that, too, which is why theyre offering to do this for people. The awardees get some potentially interesting molecules to test, and the company gets a presumably diverse set of real-world examples to test their technology against. (I should note that they already have agreements with several academic groups, and one with Merck (NYSE:MRK), for an unnamed project). Personally, Ill be surprised if theres much of an enhancement for many of these, but I wish the company luck, and I think that their commitment to putting their software to the test is admirable.

Is it "artificial intelligence", though? Thats a topic I touched on in my talk last year in Manchester. I think that if you time-machined people from the 1950s into our present-day world and hit them with Google Maps (for example), theyd probably call that artificial intelligence. "Sure, thats intelligent, although for some reason you only seem to have taught it about roads". From that standpoint, AtomWise would also be called AI, but from a modern perspective, if thats AI then so are the rest of the modeling and docking programs. Ill put that one down to press release language, and hope that it doesnt become a big part of their pitch.

The part that annoys me more is the "72 potential medicines" line. Screening hits are potential medicines in the same way that AtomWise is a potential Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) sure, they all start out this way, but not many make it through to the end. People are confused enough about where drugs come from and what it takes to get them there; Im never happy to see more confusion being dumped in on top of what weve got.

Link:
Free Compounds, Chosen By Software - Seeking Alpha