Security News This Week: The Latest Netflix Release Is a Personal Security Check-Up

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IT WOULDN’T BE 2017 without regular internet-shaking security bugs fueling our nightmares. The crisis >du jour? a flaw in the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare that caused random data leakage from some of the company’s six million customer sites. Brush your teeth and change your passwords, folks. Meanwhile, researchers have figured out how to steal data by watching a hard drive’s blinking LED indicator. And it’s finally possible to attack an old cryptographic hash function that’s still used for encryption more than it should be.

There was good news this week, too, though. Google offshoot Jigsaw and Google’s Counter Abuse Technology Team publicly released code for anti-harassment toolsthey’ve been honing for more than a year so they can hopefully be implemented around the web. Military bases could use smart city technology to improve their safety and security. And former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter gave WIRED a glimpse of the future of warfare.

Then again, an arms dealer who sells military tech like tanks, missiles, and weapons told WIRED that doing business in the age of President Trump is a “win-win.” So, there’s that.

If you’re sick of all of this and want to crawl under a digital rock, prominent hacker Kevin Mitnick details how to be invisible online.

But wait, there’s plenty more. Each Saturday we round up the news stories that we didn’t break or cover in depth but that still deserve your attention. As always, click on the headlines to read the full story in each link posted. And stay safe out there.

Little Caesars founder quietly paid Rosa Parks' rent for years

Little Caesars founder Mike Ilitch passed away on Friday.

(CNN)Those who knew Mike Ilitch, the Little Caesars founder and Detroit Tigers owner who died last Friday, have spent the past few days fondly remembering his impact on friends, on Detroit residents, and on the sports community.

Ilitch also had an impact on the daily life of one of the most iconic figures from the civil rights movement.

For more than a decade, Ilitch had quietly paid for Rosa Parks' apartment in downtown Detroit, according to CNN affiliate WXYZ.

That story came to light thanks to Damon Keith, a Detroit native and federal judge.

"They don't go around saying it, but I want to, at this point, let them know, how much the Ilitches not only meant to the city, but they meant so much for Rosa Parks, who was the mother of the civil rights movement," Keith told WXYZ.

President Donald Trump signs first bill into law

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump signed his first bill into law Friday, moments after being sworn in, clearing the way for his defense secretary to be confirmed.

The 45th President signed a bill passed by Congress earlier this month that would allow retired Gen. James Mattis to serve as defense secretary by waiving the legal requirement that he be out of the military for seven years before doing so, according to White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Mattis will still need to be confirmed by the Senate, which is expected Friday afternoon.

Cameras rolled as Trump signed his first orders as President in the Capitol, surrounded by congressional leaders.

According to Spicer, the other papers Trump was signing included formal nominations for his Cabinet and a proclamation for a national day of patriotism.

The ceremony took place moments after Trump left the podium outside the Capitol building where he was sworn in and delivered his inaugural address.

California threatens legal action against Uber unless it halts self-driving cars

Threat from the attorney general came shortly after Uber declared it would defy state regulations, a move the company said as ‘an important issue of principle’

Uber’s defiant stance appears to be setting the company on a collision course with California regulators in court. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

California’s attorney general Kamala Harris on Friday threatened legal action against the ride-sharing tech company Uber unless it “immediately” removes its self-driving from the roads in San Francisco.

The threat from the office of the outgoing attorney general was contained in a letter released to the public Friday shortly after Uber declared it would defy state regulations, a move the company said was “an important issue of principle”.

Twenty companies have been approved to test self-driving cars in California, according to the DMV. Uber is not one of them, and the company is refusing to abide by the same rules as its rivals – a defiant move that critics argue shows disregard for the law and public safety.

Friday’s development portends a dramatic confrontation between Uber and California state officials, amid mounting anger in San Francisco at Uber’s refusal to abide by the same rules as other companies.

Harris, a rising star in the Democratic party, was recently elected to the US Senate. The letter from attorneys in her office said they were acting on a request from California’s department of motor vehicles (DMV).

The DMV ordered Uber to either remove its self-driving cars from the road or obtain a permit on Wednesday, the first day the company began a trial of its self-driving taxis in San Francisco without permission.

The letter warns that if Uber does not remove the vehicles from the road until it obtains a permit, the attorney general will “seek injunctive and other appropriate relief”.

Earlier Friday, Uber made clear it had no intention of backing down.

French police defy government in growing protest movement over lawlessness

Hundreds of police officers have been protesting in Paris and other cities to denounce what they say are insufficient resources to fight mounting lawlessness, defying government demands that they stop the unauthorised demonstrations.

Six months from an election, the protest, now in its third day, has put President François Hollande’s Socialist government on the defensive at a time when security forces are struggling to combat the threat of further terrorist attacks.

Political opponents have seized on the discontent to accuse the government of letting violent crime and everyday lawlessness proliferate despite a large police recruitment drive.

“I understand the anger of the police,” conservative former president Nicolas Sarkozy said. “I’ve never seen such an erosion of authority in this country,” Sarkozy, who is campaigning to become president again, told Europe 1 radio.

Yemen: US-Made Bombs Used in Unlawful Airstrikes

Dozens of Civilian Deaths Underscore Need for Saudi Arms Embargo

(Beirut) – The Saudi Arabia-led coalition killed several dozen civilians in three apparently unlawful airstrikes in September and October 2016, Human Rights Watch said today. The coalition’s use of United States-supplied weapons in two of the strikes, including a bomb delivered to Saudi Arabia well into the conflict, puts the US at risk of complicity in unlawful attacks.

The attacks underscore the urgent need for foreign governments to suspend all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and for the United Nations human rights office to send additional investigators to Yemen to carry out credible investigations of alleged abuses by the coalition, the Houthis and their allies, and all other parties to the conflict, Human Rights Watch said.

“Saudi-led forces are bombing civilians in Yemen with newly supplied US weapons,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Obama administration is running out of time to completely suspend US arms sales to Saudi Arabia or be forever linked to Yemen wartime atrocities.”

A Methodist Network for Immigrants Believes in ‘Welcoming the Stranger’

Rob Rutland-Brown of National Justice for Our Neighbors lives out his faith by helping run legal clinics for low-income immigrants in 10 states

The children of Methodist volunteers play with the children of immigrant clients during a Justice for Our Neighbors clinic at Hillcrest United Methodist Church, Nashville, Tenn., 2012. PHOTO: JAN SNYDER

Coming from a family of United Methodist ministers—including his father, grandparents, aunts and uncles—Rob Rutland-Brown says that his own generation was expected to find a vocation in the church as well. But after stints working as a schoolteacher and with the Special Olympics, Mr. Rutland-Brown found a different way to act on his faith: helping immigrants.

In 1996, while Mr. Rutland-Brown was a teenager in Florida, one of his cousins and an aunt co-founded a nonprofit in northern Virginia to provide legal aid to low-income immigrants who had been seeking advice informally at local churches. Nearly a decade later, his cousin, Allison Rutland Soulen, decided to devote herself full-time to legal work at the nonprofit, and Mr. Rutland-Brown—with a new graduate degree in nonprofit management—took on her job and became executive director of the group, called Just Neighbors.

How Grammar Influences Legal Interpretations

Grammar is important, but it’s not a matter of life or death. Or is it? How does grammar influence the legal system? Researchers decided to find out by conducting an experiment. Does the wording of the description of a murder affect whether jurors classify a crime as first- or second-degree murder? According to their findings, “legal judgments can be affected by grammatical aspect but [most significantly] limited to temporal dynamics… In addition, findings demonstrate that the influence of grammatical aspect on situation model construction and evaluation is dependent upon the larger linguistic and semantic context.” In other words, grammar plays a part, but the study participants also paid attention to context when making their decisions. Is grammar as significant in real-life legal cases?