Hasta La Gadget!

SAN FRANCISCO — Prosecutors in Los Angeles and San Francisco have sued Uber over its background check policies and other business practices, alleging that the popular ride-sharing service lied to give customers a false sense of security.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon announced Tuesday that he and Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey had joined to sue San Francisco-based Uber, claiming that the company violated California law with fraudulent business practices. The lawsuit alleges that Uber lied to consumers about the strength of its background check system and charged UberX users a $1 “Safe Rides Fee” that falsely advertised the checks. The lawsuit also accuses the company of illegally operating at airports, charging riders fraudulent airport fees and calculating fares without consulting with state agencies.

Gascon chastised Uber for not using fingerprints or LiveScan when screening potential drivers, instead relying on driver-provided information. Uber, by calling its background check process “industry-leading,” is “giving consumers a false sense of security when deciding whether to get into a stranger’s car,” Gascon said at a news conference.

“At the end of the day, you cannot conduct the most comprehensive background check possible if the info you have obtained has nothing to do with the person that is signing on with you to be a driver,” Gascon said. ”It is completely worthless.”

Lyft, a competing ride-share service also based in San Francisco, settled a similar lawsuit with the state, agreeing to pay $500,000 in civil penalties and resolve issues raised by the suit. Sidecar, another competitor, also is under investigation.

Uber said it had met with the district attorneys to discuss the concerns.

“Californians and California lawmakers all agree — Uber is an integral, safe, and established part of the transportation ecosystem in the Golden State. Uber has met with the District Attorneys to address their concerns regarding airport operations, the uberPOOL product, background checks, and operation of the app,” Uber spokeswoman Eva Behrend said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post. “We will continue to engage in discussions with the District Attorneys.”

Ride-sharing services, which allow customers to summon a ride from their smartphones, have become hugely popular in recent years for providing a convenient and affordable alternative to traditional taxi services. However, the services have raised regulatory issues as states grapple with how ride-sharing fits with existing law.

Uber, the largest of the three biggest ride-sharing companies, has faced legal and publicity woes in recent weeks. Earlier Tuesday, Portland, Oregon, sued to stop the company from operating there. The service was suspended in Nevada and banned in the Netherlands, Spain and Thailand.

In New Delhi, Uber was blocked from operating after a driver was accused of raping a female passenger. The driver in question had been previously arrested on sexual assault charges. Additionally, a former Uber driver was charged Tuesday with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in the death of a 6-year-old girl who was struck in San Francisco last year.

Read the full lawsuit against Uber below:

Uber Lawsuit

Sure, it’s basically The Avengers re-casted with characters that we never knew existed fighting bad guys in space and yeah, it’s totally Marvel flexing their movie muscles and exploiting us sheep but man, Guardians of the Galaxy was fun. Even Honest Trailers admits how hard it is to make fun of this movie.

Read more…

The US may never have used its microwave pain gun in combat, but that isn’t stopping China from exploring the concept of non-lethal force. Local manufacturer Poly has unveiled the WB-1, a millimeter-wave weapon that heats the water under your skin (m…

While Acer has dabbled in Windows Phone handsets in the past, they have largely stopped producing these devices. In fact last year we heard that Acer wanted to sit by the sidelines and see how the Windows Phone situation turned out before deciding whether or not to jump back into the game.

A report from this year suggested that Acer was interested and now according to Gizbot who managed to speak with Acer officials at their Liquid-series smartphone event, it has been revealed that the company plans to launch a handful of Windows Phone handsets during the first half of 2015.

Assuming the information is accurate, we won’t be surprised if Acer were to take the wraps off some of them during CES or MWC 2015, both of which are important events for companies looking to show off new hardware. It is unclear as to what kind of devices Acer has in mind or when we can expect them to debut specifically, so we guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.

As it stands, Acer has the Allegro as part of its Windows Phone lineup. The device isn’t particularly impressive by any means, at least compared to the likes of those put out by Microsoft, and let’s not forget the HTC One M8 for Windows which packs quite a punch, so hopefully come 2015 Acer will have some better and more impressive hardware for us.

Acer To Return With Slew Of Windows Phones In 2015

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NEW YORK — The CIA provided “inaccurate” information to journalists in effort to shape coverage of its detention and interrogation program, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bombshell torture report.

The report, of which a 500-page summary was made public Tuesday, included graphic details of CIA torture techniques and described how the agency misled the White House and Congress about the effectiveness of the methods in extracting useful intelligence. At times, the CIA also misled the media.

The Senate committee found that author Ronald Kessler and former New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl were provided “inaccurate claims about the effectiveness of CIA interrogations, much of it consistent with the inaccurate information being provided by the CIA to policymakers at the time.” The report also found that a 2005 NBC “Dateline” story, which included both on-the-record and off-the-record claims from intelligence officials, featured “inaccurate” information touting gains from use of torture, according to the summary.

The classified disclosures to Kessler and Jehl were authorized, so there were no subsequent leak investigations, according to the report summary. There also is no record of a criminal investigation into the leak to “Dateline,” suggesting those classified disclosures were sanctioned as well.

The CIA’s public affairs office cooperated with Jehl on a March 2005 article he co-wrote with David Johnston. In the article, an unnamed senior U.S. official claims that “the intelligence obtained by those rendered, detained and interrogated have disrupted terrorist operations” and “saved lives in the United States and abroad.”

The report summary described how the CIA “decided to cooperate again” with Jehl in late 2005 for an article that would have appeared to portray the agency’s interrogation program in a flattering light. According to the report summary, Jehl “provided the CIA with a detailed outline of his proposed story, informed the CIA that he would emphasize that the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques worked, that they were approved through an inter-agency process, and that the CIA went to great lengths to ensure that the interrogation program was authorized by the White House and the Department of Justice.”

Jehl, now foreign editor of The Washington Post, did not comment directly on the committee’s findings, but broadly defended his work during that period.

“As a national security reporter for The Times in 2005, I worked aggressively to pursue and publish stories about the CIA’s harsh interrogation of terrorist suspects, at a time when those details remained highly classified,” Jehl said. “I am proud of the work that my Times colleagues and I did in bringing these CIA practices to light. I was not interviewed for the Senate report, and would never comment on reporting that was based on confidential conversations with current and former U.S. government officials.’’

The leak to Kessler for his book, The CIA At War, wasn’t investigated either, because it didn’t contain “first time disclosures” and because the CIA’s public affairs office “provided assistance” for it, according to the report summary. The CIA cooperated again with Kessler in 2007 for another book in order to “push back” against the FBI. The CIA believed the FBI was overstating its role in fighting terrorism and the effectiveness of its own interrogation of suspects. After consulting with the CIA, Kessler wrote how the agency “could point to a string of successes and dozens of plots that were rolled up because of coercive interrogation techniques.”

“The statements in the revised text on the ‘successes’ attributable to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques were similar to CIA representations to policymakers and were incongruent with CIA records,” the report’s summary concluded.

Kessler told The Huffington Post that his interaction with the CIA on these books wasn’t out of the ordinary. He said he had similarly gone directly to the FBI in the course of his reporting.

“I solicited their cooperation,” Kessler said. “Of course they told the story they wanted to tell. It was standard reporting. Nothing nefarious.”

Kessler said the committee’s report is a “fraud” and waste of taxpayer dollars. “When it comes to its effectiveness, Leon Panetta, to me, has closed the case,” Kessler said, a reference to the former CIA director’s past statements on the use of torture techniques.

In his recent book, Panetta wrote that “we got important, even critical intelligence from individuals subjected to these enhanced interrogation techniques.” He also wrote that it’s unknown “whether those were the only ways to elicit that information.”