How your smartphone's battery life can be used to invade your privacy

A little-known feature of the HTML5 specification means that websites can find out how much battery power a visitor has left on their laptop or smartphone – and now, security researchers have warned that that information can be used to track browsers online. --The battery status API is currently supported in the Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers, and was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, the organisation that oversees the development of the web’s standards) in 2012, with the aim of helping websites conserve users’ energy.

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Gingrich: How Smartphones Can Replace Bureaucracy

Follow the link for text and a video excerpted from the speech “Veterans and Their Smartphones: Creating a 21st Century Veterans Service System,” delivered by Newt Gingrich at the American Enterprise Institute, August 12, 2014.

EXCERPT: Take out your smartphone. You are holding the entry point for a massive information system. Every time you think the proposals in this speech are unrealistic look, at your own smart phone and the apps you already have installed on it. Which is more representative of our future? The current failing bureaucracies, or the smart phone in your hand?

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