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Klint Finley reports that Edward Snowden used a Linux Distro designed for anonymity to keep his communications out of the NSA's prying eyes. The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a kind of computer-in-a-box using a version of the Linux operating system optimized for anonymity that you install on a DVD or USB drive, boot your computer from and you're pretty close to anonymous on the internet. "Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn't store any data locally," writes Finley. "This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources." The developers of Tails are, appropriately, anonymous. They're protecting their identities, in part, to help protect the code from government interference. "The NSA has been pressuring free software projects and developers in various ways," the group says.

But since we don't know who wrote Tails, how do we now it isn't some government plot designed to snare activists or criminals? A couple of ways, actually. One of the Snowden leaks show the NSA complaining about Tails in a Power Point Slide; if it's bad for the NSA, it's safe to say it's good for privacy. And all of the Tails code is open source, so it can be inspected by anyone worried about foul play. "With Tails", say the distro developers, "we provide a tongue and a pen protected by state-of-the-art cryptography to guarantee basic human rights and allow journalists worldwide to work and communicate freely and without fear of reprisal."

The Washington Post reports that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds are instead getting letters informing them that because of a debt they never knew about - often a debt incurred by their parents - the government has confiscated their check - sometimes on debts 20 or 30 years old. For example, when Mary Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them. Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family - it's not sure who - in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. "It was a shock," says Grice, 58. "What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can't prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus."

The Treasury Department has intercepted $1.9 billion in tax refunds already this year - $75 million of that on debts delinquent for more than 10 years, says Jeffrey Schramek, assistant commissioner of the department's debt management service. The aggressive effort to collect old debts started three years ago - the result of a single sentence tucked into the farm bill lifting the 10-year statute of limitations on old debts to Uncle Sam. The Federal Trade Commission, on its Web site, advises Americans that "family members typically are not obligated to pay the debts of a deceased relative from their own assets." But Social Security officials say that if children indirectly received assistance from public dollars paid to a parent, the children's money can be taken, no matter how long ago any overpayment occurred. Many of the taxpayers whose refunds have been taken say they've been unable to contest the confiscations because of the cost, because Social Security cannot provide records detailing the original overpayment, and because the citizens, following advice from the IRS to keep financial documents for just three years, had long since trashed their own records. More than 1,200 appeals have been filed on the old cases but only about 10 percent of taxpayers have won those appeals. "The government took the money first and then they sent us the letter," says Brenda Samonds.." We could never get one sentence from them explaining why the money was taken."

In an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jenny McCarthy claims she is not anti-vaccine. "I believe in the importance of a vaccine program and I believe parents have the right to choose one poke per visit. I've never told anyone to not vaccinate. Should a child with the flu receive six vaccines in one doctor visit? Should a child with a compromised immune system be treated the same way as a robust, healthy child? Shouldn't a child with a family history of vaccine reactions have a different plan? Or at least the right to ask questions?"

However Jeffrey Kluger, who interviewed McCarthy in 2009, responds in Time Magazine that McCarthy believes vaccines cause autism, that they are related to OCD, ADHD and other physical and behavioral ills, that they are overprescribed, teeming with toxins, poorly regulated and that the only reason we keep forcing them into the sweet, pristine immune systems of children is because doctors, big pharma and who-knows what-all sinister forces want it that way. "Jenny, as outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough continue to appear in the U.S.-most the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the scare stories passed around by anti-vaxxers like you-it's just too late to play cute with the things you've said. You are either floridly, loudly, uninformedly antivaccine or you are the most grievously misunderstood celebrity of the modern era. Science almost always prefers the simple answer, because that's the one that's usually correct. Your quote trail is far too long-and you have been far too wrong-for the truth not to be obvious."

Michael Larabel writes at Phoronix that the GNOME Foundation is running into a budget shortfall and funds are becoming very tight. According to Larabel one of the reasons the Foundation got into this situation is through its Outreach Program for Women (OPW) which had around 30 interns for their most recent cycle and managing the program (and funds) for a number of other participating organizations. The GNOME Foundation staff and board fell behind in their processes with being overwhelmed by administering OPW. "Making matters worse, in their 2014 budget they made assumptions based upon the previous year's incomes and expenditures, which were more optimistic. There's also the matter of payments from GNOME sponsors and others owing the GNOME Foundation money being rather fluid or coming in late."

To rectify their budget shortfall, the Foundation is going through with its invoicing of conference sponsors, more pro-actively following up on unpaid invoices, better invoicing OPW sponsoring, increasing their general fundraising efforts, and taking other efforts. The Foundation also voted last week to "freeze Foundation spending which is not essential to the running of the Foundation. By keeping expenditures to a minimum while some delayed revenue is regained, the board aims to have things back to normal within a few months." Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can figure out various donation means by becoming a friend of GNOME.

Alex Mayyasi writes that a close look at the cars outside Silicon Valley's venture capital firms reveals that the cars share a mysterious detail: they nearly all have a custom license plate frame that reads, "Member. 11-99 Foundation" which is the charitable organization that supports California Highway Patrol officers and their families in times of crisis. Donors receive one license plate as part of a $2,500 "Classic" level donation, or two as part of a bronze, silver, or gold level donation of $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. Rumor has it, according to Mayyasi, that the license plate frames come with a lucrative return on investment. As one member of a Mercedes-Benz owners community wrote online back in 2002: "I have the ultimate speeding ticket solution. I paid $1800 for a lifetime membership into the 11-99 foundation. My only goal was to get the infamous 'get out of jail' free license plate frame."

The 11-99 Foundation has sold license plate frames for most of its 32 year existence, and drivers have been aware of the potential benefits since at least the late 1990s. But attention to the issue in 2006-2008 led the foundation to stop giving out the frames. An article in the LA Times asked "Can Drivers Buy CHP Leniency?" and began by describing a young man zipping around traffic -- including a police cruiser -- and telling the Times that he believed his 11-99 frames kept him from receiving a ticket. But the decision was almost irrelevant to another thriving market: the production and sale of fake 11-99 license plate frames. But wait - the CHP 11-99 Foundation also gives out membership cards to big donors. "Unless you have the I.D. in hand when (not if) I stop you," says one cop, "no love will be shown."

Barry Levine writes that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is urging environmentalists to have some compassion for the coal miners they help put out of work because they can't be easily retrained to do other jobs. "Mark Zuckerberg says you can teach them to code and everything will be great. I don't know how to break it to you - but no" said Bloomberg. "You're not going to teach a coal miner to code." Bloomberg, who is an environmental activist, said while he gives "a lot of money to the Sierra Club" to shut down coal-fired power plants and to promote green energy projects, society needs to "have some compassion to do it gently."

Thousands of coal mining jobs have been shed throughout the country, there were about two thousand fewer coal miners in March 2014 than at the same time last year. Coal-reliant states, like Kentucky have been hit especially hard with more than 2,200 mining jobs lost in that state alone last year - a 23 percent decline. Bloomberg suggested subsidies to help displaced workers, like coal miners, and maybe even retaining. But Bloomberg said retraining isn't always an option, especially in an economy becoming increasingly tech savvy. Bloomberg stressed the need for the retraining to be "realistic."

Ewan Palmer reports that actress Kate Mulgrew, known for her role as Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager, says she was tricked into narrating a controversial documentary that claims the Earth is the center of the Universe. The film, which describes itself as "destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time", argues the long-debunked theory of geocentrism - where the Earth is the center of the Universe and the Sun resolves around it - is true and NASA has tried to cover it up. Following confusion as to why Mulgrew chose to narrate the film scientists have described as "garbage", the actress posted a statement on her Facebook page denying she was a geocentrist or "in any way a proponent of geocentrism". "I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused." Dr Max Tegmark, a cosmologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he was also misled into appearing in the film. "I was told that this would be a science documentary by independent filmmakers who wanted to increase public appreciation for science. I should clearly have asked for more details in advance. These geocentric arguments are about as unscientific as things get."

This is not the first time scientists have been taken out of context to advance a far-right political agenda. In 2008, Ben Stein's Expelled was panned by participants who were made to believe they were doing an entirely different film. Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion."

Allen McDuffee writes the the US Navy's latest weapon is an electromagnetic railgun launcher that can hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7 with a range of 100 miles that will turn destroyers into super-long-range machine guns able to fire up to a dozen relatively inexpensive projectiles every minute. The Navy says the cost differential - $25,000 for a railgun projectile versus $500,000 to $1.5 million for a missile - will make potential enemies think twice about the economic viability of engaging U.S. forces. "[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: 'Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?'" says Rear Admiral Matt Klunder. "Because you are going to lose. You could throw anything at us, frankly, and the fact that we now can shoot a number of these rounds at a very affordable cost, it's my opinion that they don't win."

Engineers already have tested this futuristic weapon on land, and the Navy plans to begin sea trials aboard a Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket in 2016. Railguns use electromagnetic energy known as the Lorenz Force to launch a projectile between two conductive rails. The high-power electric pulse generates a magnetic field to fire the projectile with very little recoil, officials say. Weapons like the electromagnetic rail gun could help U.S. forces retain their edge and give them an asymmetric advantage over rivals, making it too expensive to use missiles to attack U.S. warships because of the cheap way to defeat them. "Your magazine never runs out, you just keep shooting, and that's compelling."

In 1990, about 8 percent of the US population had no religious preference but by 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent. That's a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion. Now MIT Technology Review reports that Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, has analyzed the data in detail and says that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation is the result of several factors but about 25 percent of the drop is due to the rise of the Internet. Downey concludes that the increase in Internet use in the last two decades has caused a significant drop in religious affiliation: for moderate use (2 or more hours per week) the odds ratio is 0.82. For heavier use (7 or more hours per week) the odds ratio is 0.58.

What Downey has found is a correlation and any statistician will tell you that correlations do not imply causation. But that does not mean that it is impossible to draw conclusions from correlations, only that they must be properly guarded. "Correlation does provide evidence in favor of causation, especially when we can eliminate alternative explanations or have reason to believe that they are less likely," says Downey. It's straightforward to imagine how spending time on the Internet can lead to religious disaffiliation. "For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to find information about people of other religions (and none), and to interact with them personally," says Downey. "Conversely, it is harder (but not impossible) to imagine plausible reasons why disaffiliation might cause increased Internet use."

There is another possibility: that a third unidentified factor causes both increased Internet use and religious disaffiliation. But Downey discounts this possibility. "We have controlled for most of the obvious candidates, including income, education, socioeconomic status, and rural/urban environments. (PDF)" If this third factor exists, it must have specific characteristics. It would have to be something new that was increasing in prevalence during the 1990s and 2000s, just like the Internet. "It is hard to imagine what that factor might be."