Engadget

You know what your life is missing? A speaker that looks like the inside of a high-end luxury car. Thankfully, Zeppelin-maker Bowers & Wilkins has just the thing for you. The 805 Maserati Edition is the result of a partnership with the Italian automaker, building on the 805 Diamond speakers with the addition of black leather, bird's eye maple and the car company's trident logo. The speaker hits audio stores come fall, and later this year, it'll be joined by what we assume will be equally extravagant P5 Maserati Edition headphones.

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Yesterday a series of leaked PowerPoint slides in the Washington Post revealed a program codenamed PRISM that allowed government investigators access to data from a number of top internet companies. That leak has been followed up in the last 24 hours by a series of blanket denials as tech companies (and their CEOs, including Google's Larry Page and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg) claimed they do not give "backdoor access," only generally acknowledging that they do respond to individual court orders. Meanwhile government officials including President Obama responded to the claims mostly by claiming whatever is going on -- including the bulk collection of call logs by the NSA -- is legal and has been "repeatedly authorized by Congress."

Tonight, a New York Times article may be able to explain the difference between the statements, citing information from people briefed on the program and lawyers that handle the requests. Their report is that the companies discussed ways to "efficiently and securely" share data about foreign users in response to requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In contrast to the initial reports of direct server access, this report claims when a government request is made under an individual FISA request, it's reviewed by company lawyers and then sent over, sometimes electronically using company servers. That can include an investigation into a specific person, logs of certain search terms, and in some cases "real-time transmission of data." One specific instance cited involved an NSA agent going on-site at a company's HQ, installing government software on its server and remaining there for several weeks to offload data to a laptop.

So why the quick denials about something the companies listed (including AOL, parent company of Engadget) may actually have ties to? Because FISA requests are by their nature secret, the report claims employees that deal with the requests can't discuss the details, even with their fellow employees. Notably, although companies must by law respond to the requests, they're not legally obligated to make it easy, and the article points out Twitter as a company that has declined to participate. Because of that, even if PRISM is more a streamlining of bureaucratic processes than a government backdoor into your Candy Crush Saga level, the semantic differences of company denials may not sit well with users, much less citizens voting for the officials who oversee the programs.

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Samsung is no stranger to teasing its fans, and with expectations running high that it'll introduce a true cameraphone -- the Galaxy S 4 Zoom -- in London on June 20th, you'll have to forgive us for being more than curious for what's in store. We've already seen a hint of such a device at the FCC, but now it seems that we may be looking at the hybrid phone / camera in all its eyebrow-raising glory. Thanks to SamMobile and TechTastic, we're treated to purported renders and "in the wild" shots of the Galaxy S 4 Zoom, which line up with expectations that it'll be based on the Galaxy S 4 Mini. If this is the real deal, in addition to similar specs, it seems that we can expect a dedicated shutter button on the righthand side, which is situated below a volume rocker that's said to activate the camera's optical zoom lens. On the opposing side of the cameraphone, you'll find a dedicated tripod mount. Could this be an intentional leak in response to a similar outing from Nokia? Only time will tell, but we hope to know for sure in the coming days.

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Most of us who receive an email stating we're lucky winners of 500 units of cash money from PayPal might brush it off as a phishing scam. But what happens if the email looks legit? And what if PayPal was genuinely running a promotional campaign offering that amount to 10 random people each day, as long as they used the service that week? You'd be forgiven for believing it. That's exactly what happened to some PayPal users in Germany yesterday when they received an official email stating they've won 500 euros. So they rushed to their PayPal accounts only to find... nothing. You see, PayPal did actually send those emails, but it did so accidentally. PayPal Germany offered a mea culpa on its Facebook page, stating that it was "due to a technical error" and winners have not yet been chosen. Oops. Maybe PayPal should consider giving that money away anyway; it could stand to improve its image after all.

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You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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"If you're in this room, you're the best of the best," Chris Anderson addressed the audience with his customary flair for the dramatic. Complimentary, sure, but not without merit -- the former Wired editor-in-chief was speaking to a classroom full of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) developers, a number of whom had been flown out on his company's dime to take part in DroneCon, the kickoff event for the SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition held in Boulder, Colo. Anderson's 3D Robotics organized a packed schedule of talks on the subject of UAVs, commencing with his own opening address. He closed his remarks by introducing the concept of the Dronecode Consortium, an attempt to create a governing body of sorts to help create standards for the platforms on which these commercial and hobbyist vehicles run.

Still in its early stages (with only his own company on board, really), Anderson was purposely vague about the not-for-profit pursuit, though the initial stated goal is the creation of a support structure for developers and the "creation of a sustained operating system" and a "framework for deciding which hardware to support." When we spoke to him after the speech, however, he admitted that "operating system" might ultimately be a little less accurate than "platform" and "ecosystem." That said, Android is certainly a fair analogy in some respects, given the sort of oversight roles commercial organizations play in both open software scenarios. And with the standard, comes the potential for both commercial and personal projects to build atop it.

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President Obama hasn't been shy about engaging the public and other nations on digital issues, and that includes the idea of cyber warfare. While his administration has been pretty aggressive in building up our cyber defenses, our offensive capabilities have remained somewhat more mysterious. According to a leaked document obtained by the Guardian, the White House has made moves to seriously step up its digital arsenal. In fact, it appears that a Presidential Policy Directive issued in October (though, never released for public consumption) ordered that a list of over-seas targets be drawn up for potential future offensives. Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (or OCEOs) are cited in the directive as having "unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world." It then goes on to say that the government will, "identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power."

The more aggressive approach to battling foreign nations through the internet is likely to raise concerns in certain circles about the weaponization of the web. Of course, such fears about militarization aren't completely unwarranted. But with countries like China posing serious digital threats, government officials will likely see the moves as necessary. The document also says that any operations must abide by US and international law, though, we doubt any suggestions that our government blatantly ignore such rules would ever be put down on paper. The leak of the document follows hot on the heels of the growing PRISM scandal, which has put the nations digital policies front and center in the public's mind.

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Google first implemented face-unlock in ICS, and since then, it's been hard at work improving the feature and acquiring new IP related to it. Last fall, the search giant patented a way for multiple users to use face-unlock on a single device. This week it obtained a new patent for a method that requires users to make a series of facial expressions to gain access to a system. Essentially, the patent claims a method where a device captures two images of a user, then compares the differences in the images to identify a facial gesture and authenticate the user.

In other words, its a face-unlock method where a device looks at two pictures of your mug to tell if you're raising an eyebrow, frowning or sticking your tongue out as instructed by a prompt from the device. And, it double checks to ensure that it is, in fact, the same face in both images. Oh, and the patent leaves room for a series of expressions to be used -- so at some point in the future, you may have to give your Google-fied phone a wink and a smile before it grants you access. Guess that's easier than remembering a PIN, right?

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