Spy chief: US tech firms make it easy for terrorists

The spies are upset. The new head of UK spy agency GCHQ has complained that widespread technology is making his job harder. In an article published on his first day in office, Robert Hannigan censured US technology firms for facilitating terrorists with their social networks.

Writing in the Financial Times today, Hannigan noted that extremists in ISIS frequently communicate with one another, and the wider public, using services like WhatsApp and Twitter. The spy boss also took aim at the rise of popular encryption services such as those provided to users of Apple and Google's cellphone operating systems.

Spy agencies have long grumbled about secure services becoming available to ordinary folk, but Nigel Smart at the University of Bristol, UK, says there are good reasons for making such technologies available. "We all use cryptography to protect ourselves from the bad guys," he says.

Impossible to trace

Hannigan's complaints come as Facebook takes steps to enable users to browse the site privately, via the anonymising Tor network. This means that all of a user's data is encrypted and their browsing history is almost impossible to trace – a feature which users in countries where social media is banned or spied on may well appreciate.

Smart suggests that heightened interest in cryptography and secure communications was kicked off by documents leaked last year by Edward Snowden that detailed the surveillance methods of the US National Security Agency. "The Snowden documents revealed that the amount of data collection and potentially dubious activities carried out by intelligence agencies was much greater than people expected," he says.

Smart also points out that people may have legitimate reasons for wanting to encrypt their metadata – such as the names of the websites they visit – when browsing the internet: "Would someone in the UK be perfectly happy knowing that the security services can see that they have just visited an HIV site?" That's the sort of data that such agencies are snooping on, he says.

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Thrush's song fits human musical scales

Video: Thrush's song fits human musical scales

Once described as the finest sound in nature, the song of the North American hermit thrush has long captivated the human ear. For centuries, birdwatchers have compared it to human music – and it turns out they were on to something. The bird's song is beautifully described by the same maths that underlies human harmonies.

To our ears, two notes usually sound harmonious together if they follow a set mathematical relationship. An octave is a doubling of frequencies. Tripling the frequency of sound produces a perfect fifth, quadrupling is yet another octave, and quintupling produces a perfect third.

These relationships define the most common major chords – the ones that, across human cultures, we tend to find most pleasant to listen to.

Early studies sought to determine whether these mathematical relationships also governed the notes in bird song. Studies in the white-throated sparrow and the northern nightingale-wren failed to find the same musical intervals as those used in human music, and deemed birdsong to be something different entirely.

Making tweet music

The song of the hermit thrush challenges that conclusion. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria and colleagues analysed recordings taken in the wild of 70 full songs from this species. They isolated the frequencies corresponding to each note, and calculated the relationships between pitches appearing in each song.

Lo and behold, the vast majority of songs used notes that fitted the same simple mathematical ratios as human harmony. What's more, Fitch says the thrush can produce other notes - meaning it must choose to use these harmonic chords.

The study shows a natural bias in the thrush towards certain harmonies, similar to those found in humans and some other birds, says Martin Braun of the Swedish organisation Neuroscience of Music in Karlstad, who says the study is an important contribution to the field.

Others remain cautious. Dale Purves of Duke University in North Carolina points out that it concerns just one species, and one component of music - pitch. "What does it all mean? That's unclear," he says. The study may explain why the hermit thrush song sounds melodious to our ear, but the debate over whether or not animals have music, and whether theirs is similar to ours, remains very much open.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1406023111

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TTIP: Free trade should be freely discussed

DON'T be put off by the dull name. On the face of it, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is extremely boring: a deal to remove certain barriers to trade between the Europe Union and the United States.

But look a little closer, and your eyes will unglaze. TTIP is huge, and its effects could be dramatic, because those barriers include provisions designed to protect public health and safeguard the environment (see "TTIP: The science of the US-European trade megadeal").

That sounds worrying. But it can be argued that harmonising transatlantic rules will lead to better risk analysis than the confused and sometimes politicised regimes we have in place now. Combined with the estimated economic benefits, there might be a strong case to be made in TTIP's favour.

But we can't be sure about that, because the talks are being held behind firmly closed doors. If a deal is struck, it is most likely to be approved summarily, with little opportunity for public feedback.

So critics of TTIP's economics, as well as those worried about its deference to corporate interests, are free to fear the worst. But whoever is right, the approach is wrong. In democracies, pro and con arguments should be aired, not stifled. Talks as important as these should be in the open.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Free to fear the worst?"

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We don't need no education to weigh up chance

We are natural bookmakers. The ability to assess probabilities could be innate in all of us.

Children develop the ability to predict which of two simple events is more probable at around 5 to 6 years of age. But since this is also when most children begin school, it has been unclear whether this ability was innate or a result of the counting tasks common in early education.

To test this, Vittorio Girotto, a cognitive psychologist at the University IUAV of Venice, Italy, and his colleagues sought out rural Mayan villagers in Guatemala who'd had no formal education. Girotto's team gave 20 adult Maya three tests to gauge their intuition about probabilities. One test asked which of two containers they were more likely to draw a red token from: one with a higher proportion of red tokens, or one with a lower proportion but a higher total number of red tokens. Other tests probed their ability to modify their predictions based on new evidence, and to combine probabilities in more complex ways.

In every test, the Maya reliably chose the correct answer. Even Mayan children aged 7 to 9 years old – who had a little schooling, but much less life experience performed about equally well, and both groups did almost as well as a control group of Italian adults, Girotto found. "We wanted to show that this sense of chance exists, that it is universal, and that you do not need to be trained to evaluate uncertainty," says Girotto. "We have good evidence now that the human mind does possess this ability."

Peter Gordon, a psychologist at Columbia University in New York says that even illiterate villagers deal with probability every day when making decisions about which trees are likely to yield fruit or where the hunting is likely to be best. Even without formal education, Mayan intuition might therefore still be learned.

But if assessing probabilities does turn out to be innate within us, educators may eventually be able to take advantage of them in teaching formal lessons about probability, devising more intuitive ways of teaching probability that build on our natural understanding. "It could be the start of something interesting," says Brian Butterworth, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1410583111

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Weird wet worlds: Why Earth is lucky to have oceans

(Image: Gary Neill)

Many planets and moons harbour bizarre bodies of water – but that alone won't make them as life-friendly as Earth, say two planetary scientists

WATER, water everywhere. As the keen eyes of our telescopes probe the cosmos, they see more of one molecule than anything else. Water in huge clouds around distant quasars, water shot from faraway stars, water in the atmospheres of giant planets.

That gives us hope we might soon find one thing we have long sought, but not seen: a beautiful blue water world quite like Earth. Given the sheer number of worlds we now know to be orbiting other stars, finding one like ours would seem to be just a matter of time.

Is it that simple? The more we learn about how Earth acquired and retained its water, the more it seems the situation was incredibly fortuitous. And as we ...

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Methane cuts won't buy us time on climate change

There is no alternative to ending human emissions of carbon dioxide, if we want to prevent dangerous climate change. Suggestions that cutting a range of non-CO₂ gases might do at least part of the job are based on faulty accounting, according to a new study.

This finding reinforces the hard-headed conclusions of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which on Sunday called for an end to all CO₂ emissions by 2100 to prevent what it called "severe, widespread, and irreversible" impacts on people and nature.

The latest report is a synthesis of three assessments on the science, impact and mitigation of climate change, completed over the past 14 months. It contains no new science. But it toughens up recommendations to governments that are working towards a new deal to halt climate change, due to be signed in Paris late next year.

The conclusions are the result of a week-long meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, attended by more than a hundred governments, all of whom signed off on the final text. "The intergovernmental nature of IPCC is essential to its success," says Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the IPCC. "All governments have contributed."

Avoiding 2 degrees

The new 100-page synthesis underlines that CO₂ emissions must start falling soon and will have to be "phased out almost entirely by 2100". The science assessment, published in 2013, calculated that CO₂ emissions must be capped at 2900 billion tonnes to give a 66 per cent chance of avoiding warming above 2 degrees Cs – widely regarded as a threshold for dangerous climate change.

But some 2000 billion tonnes had already been emitted by the end of 2011. The only alternative to cutting emissions fast and soon is developing technology to capture billions of tonnes of CO₂ emissions and bury them out of harm's way – known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).

"We are currently not on track to meet the agreed 2 degrees goal," said Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, in a statement on Sunday. "And the more we delay the respective mitigation efforts, the greater the risks facing us will be."

No third way

Some scientists and governments have in the past argued that there is a third way to curb warming. Since CO₂ is not the only pollutant warming the atmosphere, action to curb other types of greenhouse emissions might be cheaper and quicker, buying time for later action on CO₂. The US administration and the UN Environment Programme in particular have promoted cutting emissions of methane gas and soot as an effective emergency response to global warming.

But a new study published independently of the IPCC report by Joeri Rogelj of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenberg, Austria, says that the potential for preventing 2 degrees of warming by controlling these pollutants has been "strongly and consistently overestimated".

The problem is twofold. Because these gases have much shorter atmospheric lifetimes – days to decades – they do not accumulate in the atmosphere the way that CO₂ does, lessening their contribution to warming.

Secondly, in many cases these other gases have the same sources as CO₂ emissions, such as burning fossil fuels. This means that some of the impact cutting other greenhouse gases would have on curbing climate change has already been included in CO₂ emissions' calculations, so those gases have in effect been "double-counted".

Many studies have not considered this, says Rogelj.

"Science has spoken," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the launch of the report in Copenhagen. "There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side."

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1415631111

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Copyrights and wrongs in the battle for ownership

• Book information


• The Copyright Wars: Three centuries of trans-Atlantic battle by Peter Baldwin


• Published by: Princeton University Press


• Price: £24.95/$35

Counterfeit goods are rampant, but online piracy is a juggernaut (Image: Xinhua News Agency/Eyevine)

There's more than one way to handle authorship and copyright in the digital age, according to The Copyright Wars by Peter Baldwin

"NEVER," I once told a crowd of students, "take advice on copyright from a professor." The professor next to me bridled. I continued: "Not if you want to make a living as a writer or artist. The professor's economic interest lies in paying to be published."

The professor nodded ruefully. They do pay – especially now that the internet has enabled the rise of online "open access" journals that live entirely from the charges they levy on their authors. An academic's reward is in the hereafter – in future contracts and eventually in tenure.

Such changes have inspired Peter Baldwin, professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, to produce an epic history of copyright and authors' rights.

Other players brought in by the internet are the corporations that rake in fortunes by copying the works of others – often without permission and almost always without payment – and selling advertising alongside them. It is remarkable how little attention Baldwin gives to this, given how they can profit from his keenness on weakening the rights of authors to make a living from a fair share of sales.

The biggest new group the internet brings to the copyright fray, though, are the millions of people who distribute words, images or tunes online with no care for the consequences. Consider the blogger who railed against UK laws that stopped him copying other people's music. He was eloquent about it: so eloquent that a newspaper pasted words from his blog into its pages. The blogger strongly objected to being associated with that particular paper. At this point, he turned around and asked for my help in enforcing his copyright.

What particular protection was he seeking? The UK's copyright law opens: "Copyright shall be a property right". It says your creative work is a commodity that you can sell outright. Laws in the US and Australia are similar.

While the blogger was mildly annoyed that the paper was making money from his words, he was much more distressed at being linked with that particular title. He should have been French. French law is about authors' rights as individual humans: it is about their right to be identified (or not, as they choose) and to defend the integrity of their works against actions contrary to their "honour or reputation". These are known as "moral rights".

Producers involved in highly collaborative ventures say these get in the way. Scriptwriters are frequently required to waive them, for example, as are regular contributors to New Scientist. But for authors generally, and academic authors in particular, identification with their own work and integrity in its use are the only sure means they have to build a career. Such writers cannot be hacks for hire and still do their job. The history of science especially is gritted with tales of the disasters that ensue when this awkward lesson is forgotten.

Baldwin errs when he says that "most authors assign rights". Most authors in English-speaking countries keep their rights intact. Elsewhere, authors' rights are generally personal rights and cannot be assigned. But he is to be congratulated for chronicling the development of the authors' rights system so fully: his enormous bibliography is invaluable.

In the "war" of his title, between tradable copyright and personal, inalienable authors' rights, we know whose side Baldwin is on. In reporting lawsuits over Google's scanning without permission of 20 million books, he dismisses most authors – except, perhaps, professors – as foppish ghosts of a Romantic dream. He declares that making a living from writing is passé, and prefers appearances and performances instead.

Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of virtual reality who is on the list of the top 100 public intellectuals, is also a musician. He argued that we should abandon copyright – until he noticed (how often he was playing benefit concerts for musicians who had given up on income from publication, spent the money from performances, and now couldn't afford healthcare. If you read Baldwin, for balance also read Lanier's Who Owns the Future?

Baldwin reserves his strongest bile, though, for those pesky Francophone "moral rights". He repeatedly alludes to a supposed connection between moral rights and fascism.

By contrast, in September the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale (the professional forum for authors' rights) heard from Paul Goldstein, professor of law at Stanford University in California. He suggested that an author's autonomy – expressed in the laws and norms of moral rights – was now as important a prerequisite of creativity as any promise of cash. He looked forward to an internet that connects authors with their audiences "in a bond of reciprocal responsibility".

For my money, Goldstein's is a much more congenial vision than Baldwin's.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Copyrights and wrongs"

Mike Holderness chairs the Authors' Rights Expert Group of the European Federation of Journalists

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Today on New Scientist

Baby chick spycam fools penguin parents

It's fluffy, has four wheels and can make an Emperor sing. A baby bird spycam is helping researchers get close to shy penguins

TTIP: Healthy profits, but what about people?

Promoting trade may boost the bottom line but it doesn't make people healthier or happier, says John Middleton of the UK Faculty of Public Health

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TTIP: Beware the treaty's empty economic promises

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Baby chick spycam fools penguin parents

(Image: AP Photo/Frederique Olivier, Downer Productions)

Who can resist a fluffy baby bird? Adult Emperor penguins are no exception, inspiring researchers to design a chick-like spycam to get close to the notoriously shy animals (see photo above).

Researchers studying the health of the majestic birds in Adélie Land, Antarctica had found that approaching them would make the birds' heart rate skyrocket and prompt them to scatter.

So Yvon Le Maho of the University of Strasbourg in France and colleagues developed the disguised rover to improve their bedside manner. The device is so convincing that the penguins' heart rate and behaviour reflected much lower stress levels. Sometimes the birds even serenaded the impostor with trumpet-like calls.

"They were very disappointed when there was no answer," Le Maho told the Associated Press. "Next time we will have a rover playing songs."

Future versions of the spycam might carry out additional detective work: they will have more sensors and the ability to read penguins' radio ID tags.

Journal reference: Nature Methods, DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.3173

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TTIP: Beware the treaty's empty economic promises

Politicians promise a bonanza of growth and jobs from the world's biggest ever trade deal, but their claims are based on biased models, warn two political economists

SUPPORTERS of TTIP claim the agreement will deliver much-needed growth and jobs. Karel De Gucht, the outgoing EU trade commissioner, described it as "the cheapest stimulus package you can imagine". To UK prime minister David Cameron it is a "once-in-a-generation prize".

At the centre of this rhetoric lie various claims about the economic impact of TTIP. These are taken from economic models produced at the behest of the European Commission. They estimate that the deal will generate an extra €119 billion of GDP annually for the EU, or €545 for each family of four, by 2027 (€95bn in total and €655 per family in the US).

Not only are these figures very modest, they are fundamentally misleading. They both exaggerate the potential benefit of TTIP and downplay its potential costs.

Firstly, much criticism has been directed at the kind of modelling used. This is known as computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling, which is used to predict how economies will react to changes in policy, such as a trade agreement.

CGE is a form of mainstream economic modelling that assumes all markets are perfectly competitive, efficient and in equilibrium. Or, in lay terms, that there is a buyer for every product or service, including labour. Not only is this a poor approximation of reality, but CGE models are notoriously open to bias. They can easily be manipulated to obtain the sorts of results the researcher wants.

These biases are evident in the TTIP models. They rely on an assumption that the deal will eliminate half of the non-tariff barriers (or at least half of those that could, in principle, be removed).

The history of EU-US regulatory cooperation suggests that this is wildly optimistic. The most that negotiators have been able to agree on in the past are a series of modest "mutual recognition agreements" of each other's rules.

Moreover, the models assume such barriers will be eliminated across all sectors of the economy, generating synergies that will promote growth. This, again, is optimistic to say the least.

The figures also hide much that is not easily measurable. This includes the social impact of trade liberalisation, which often leads to workers being forced out of uncompetitive industries.

The models do include estimates of "job displacement" – ranging from 400,000 to 1.1 million in the EU – but they also assume that these workers will be seamlessly reallocated to new jobs by the market. Experience suggests this is not always the case.

Promising growth and jobs and justifying the promise with economic models has been a powerful tool in the past to stifle political debate on controversial issues. No politician wants to be seen as anti-growth and anti-jobs.

It's time we challenged this tactic so that we can have an open and constructive discussion of the real costs and benefits of TTIP.

Read more: "TTIP: The science of the US-European trade megadeal"

This article appeared in print under the headline "An economy of truth"

Ferdi De Ville is assistant professor in EU studies at Ghent University, Belgium. Gabriel Siles-Brügge is lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester, UK

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