Next time you stop by Enterprise Rent-A-Car, your vehicle rental may be electric and by the hour. These and other wide-sweeping company changes were announced earlier this week as part of a company overhaul.

Another new feature is car-sharing, similar to what is already offered by Hertz Connect and pioneer Zipcar:

“WeCar car-sharing technology — complemented by Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s extensive local car rental network — provides an environmentally friendly transportation solution, whether it is for an hour, a day, a weekend or longer. Totally automated and membership-based, WeCar serves local businesses, universities and government offices looking to enhance their fleet management operations and sustainability initiatives.”

And if that’s not enough, the company planted 5 million trees this year. And they’ll plant another 45 million in the next 50 years! Look out Zipcar: As crunchy as you are, have you planted 5 million trees yet?

Wired’s defence dude, Noah Schachtman, has a fascinating story about Google and the CIA being joint investors in a web monitoring firm. Both Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the CiA’s investment arm, have injected sums (less than $10 million each) into Recorded Future, a company that goes through “tens of thousands” of websites and looks for related actions and conversations between, for example, Twitter accounts, blogs and websites, and analyses them in order to spot events and trends as early on as possible.

Describing its analytics as “the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence,” Recorded Future markets itself towards corporations and brands, but it’s also got one very large foot in the counter-terrorism field–which is what makes it so attractive to In-Q-Tel. The firm’s CEO is an ex Swedish Army Ranger who holds a PhD in Computer Science, and he says that what sets Recorded Future apart from other analytics firms is “you can actually predict the curve, in many cases.”

As well as the “business intelligence” side to the firm, there’s a real feeling of Minority Report, here. It sounds like the kind of tool that will be used to predict crimes and terrorist activity as well. Analytics are already being used by the Memphis Police Department, whose Operation Blue CRUSH uses predictive analytics by IBM.

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Now, at first glance, it looks like the hardest thing that Google is going to have to deal with is the way this (coincidental, or accidental, surely) hook-up with the CIA looks. The PR is going to be mighty tricky–I mean, try explaining this to Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson, as the potential for consumer data leaks is significant, not to mention Google’s increasing presence in governmental bodies. Now that yet another connection has been established between the “one-trick pony” (as Schmidt described Google to the Wall Street Journal yesterday) there may be calls to establish a chinese wall so that Google’s user data isn’t shared with the guys with earpieces. That is, assuming that the two investors are actually using the service rather than just being vanilla investors.

Not only is the White House close to Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, but it’s leaning towards the idea of granting the FBI powers to force firms such as ISPs to hand over an individual’s data. However, for all the intelligence agencies’ fanatical interest in technological tools that, while plowing through the idea of individual privacy, seem (to them) to be the only way of tackling the increasing security issues both at home and abroad, there is one thing to remember, as Charles Homan’s piece in Foreign Policy this week shows.

For all the hi-tech know-how, the only way of really proving that the intel gathered is bona fide is common sense. And, rather like FIFA’s stance on technology in football (although the CIA is much more pro than Sepp Blatter ever will be) the ultimate decision needs to be made by an individual, not an algorithm. Gut instinct still trumps tech.

Lots of code excitement will spring from the Black Hat hacker conference this week, but already a huge controversy is erupting: Black Hat’s founder thinks SSL–the security code making much of online commerce safe–is broken. 

SSL, Secure Sockets Layer (and its successor Transport Layer Security) is a Net-based security protocol that ensures communications between computers is safe and unhackable–essentially so that no one can “listen in.” It works like this: A server and computer connect together and say hello, digitally. This bit is unsecured. The two machines exchange a “key” which unlocks a private line that only they can communicate on.

These private exchanges are the basis of safe e-shopping, including credit card transactions. On the server side the site’s owners can be certain they’re speaking to a genuine customer, who’s data can be trusted (to an extent). 

So when Black Hat’s keynote speaker Jeff Moss, founder of Black Hat and DEFCON, says that “SSL is broken” its big news. Moss alleges that it’s been 13 years since the first hacker conference, and that it’s still not safe to do ecommerce. Moss wasn’t much more specific than that, but the implication is that hackers can easily breach SSL, and thus expose millions of supposedly secure transactions to potential thieves. Back in December 2008, for example, a group of hackers used the astonishing number-crunching powers of 200 PS3 games consoles to hack SSL, and in early 2009 hackers created fake “certificates” that would make an SSL interchange appear secure, even if it actually wasn’t. It’s been a while since these exploits, and as we know hackers continually refinine their methods, so it’s plausible that much simpler exploits have been crafted in the interim.

The implications for ecommerce, and even businesses who rely on SSL code to make their communications safe, are potentially enormous. But is Moss right? V3.co.uk reports that security specialist Dan Kaminsky disagreed, and noted that there was still room to find some use from SSL–implying that clever code could still be secure, despite SSL’s weakness. 

From a user point of view, there’s probably no need to panic right now. But the risk is that a sophisticated, coordinated hack (perhaps resembling the clever exploit the let Chinese hackers break Google’s systems) could result in mass theft of user data. The risk is small, but Black Hat exists to break news of potentially serious problems like this so that coders can fix the problems.

To keep up with this news follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

South Korea’s Samsung announced yesterday the results of billions of dollars in large-scale investments in eco-friendly products and business practices, thereby ensuring a healthier future for its domestic society. What did the leading company in Korea forget? Their elderly.

We all love a good story about the world becoming greener. But South Korea has a pressing “aging” problem, with scores of people entering their elderly years in the near future. A recent article in the Japan Times notes that South Korea’s baby boomers account for 14.6 percent of the total
population. They start to turn 55–the retirement age in many big
corporations–this year. Roughly 300,000 to 400,000 salaried workers in this generation are expected to leave the workforce
each year over the next nine years. That challenge goes sorely unacknowledged when the focus is frenetically on now, now, now. And investments in sustainable business primarily benefit the young, who have many years ahead of them.

By 2050, the median age in Korea is projected to be 57 years, according to an article written by Dr. Thomas R. Klassen of York University, “making it the most elderly nation in the world. In contrast, at present, Japan has the oldest median age at 43 years, while Korea’s stands at 37 years.”

The one area in which the two issues–environmental responsibility and looking after the elderly–may work together is in the area of employment, if the elderly choose to stay employed. Here’s what the company announced in the R&D and manufacturing category:

“Samsung invested a total of 1.01 trillion Korean won (about US $865 million) in environmentally friendly product development and green manufacturing sites in 2009. Of this, 570 billion won (about US $488 million) was invested in development of energy-efficient technologies, environmentally friendly materials and renewable energy projects, and 440 billion won (about US $377 million) was put into pollutant-reducing and energy-efficient manufacturing facilities. Samsung also announced plans in May to invest a total of 6 trillion won (about US $5.1 billion) through 2020 in the development of its solar cell business, as part of a new focus on renewable energy.”

South Korea and the U.S. share in their baby boomer challenges, what with everyone screaming and pulling their hair out in the U.S. over the future of Social Security. But why fret over Social Security? Let’s just keep the elderly working longer and focus on the greener tomorrow for all our little ones!

Scott Gilmore started the Peace Dividend Trust and the Peace Dividend Marketplace as a way to cut out middle men in the international aid industry and to connect local suppliers with international buyers. As business and international aid continue to dance and intermingle, a subject covered extensively by the likes of AidWatch and NextBillion.net, Gilmore has squeezed unprecedented potential out of what some might consider one of the the least likely trade nations on the planet: Afghanistan. He talked to FastCompany.com about the Peace Dividend Trust and Marketplace and why his approach isn’t as absurd as some might think.

What is the Peace Dividend Trust and the Peace Dividend Marketplace?
PDT is a charity founded by a group of aid workers, diplomats, entrepreneurs and peacekeepers who were frustrated at how the strategic impact of aid was being severely hampered by the inefficiencies of the nuts and bolts of missions (like procurement, planning, HR, etc). PDT’s mission is to rethink and change the way aid and peacekeeping is delivered. We do this by finding, testing, and implementing new operational ideas for improving aid. Some have described us as a do tank or an “aid lab.” Currently we are 150 people working in six countries with HQ in NYC.

The Peace Dividend Marketplace is a unique project that we originally piloted in Afghanistan but which is now in Haiti, Timor, and soon Liberia. We launched it to address the problem that on average only 5-25% of aid budgets actually enter the local economy. The rest is spent on flying in goods or hiring international staff. The project creates a path of least resistance between international procurement officers and local vendors by delivering 5 services:

Training local entrepreneurs on how to find and bid on international contracts Translating and distributing international tenders locally Maintaining an online database of local entrepreneurs who we have personally verified Matchmaking large scale international procurement needs (like bottled water for a big UN mission) to local vendors Advocating for the concept of buying local with our “Buy Local – Build Afghanistan (or Timor or Haiti) campaigns

Results to date have been extraordinary. In Afghanistan we have redirected over $485m of new spending into the local economy, money that otherwise would have been spent in Dubai or Europe. As a result, we were awarded the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship this year, which came with a $750k prize.

How did you get involved in Afghanistan?After helping the UN to measure the local economic impact of all its aid missions, senior UN staff in Kabul asked us in 2006 to help them find ways to find and use Afghan entrepreneurs. This idea was soon embraced by the U.S. government in their Afghan First policies and later by other donors, too.

I, personally, first became involved in 2002 as a Canadian diplomat who was responsible for Canada’s South Asian interests and oversaw the team that opened our first embassy there in 2003.

What’s your take on WikiLeaks?It is fascinating reading, and provides a massive set of examples to illustrate the staggering challenges facing the international community there. For those working on Afghanistan daily, and working outside of the wire or outside of the bubble in Kabul, however, there are few overall surprises.

Skeptics would say doing business in Afghanistan is absurd. What’s your answer?Afghanistan has been a trading nation, sitting right in the midst of global trading crossroads, for thousands of years. It has a very entrepreneurial culture and a business community that has survived decades of war. As a result, it is one of those places where there is a real vibrant business culture like Hong Kong or Singapore. I like to tell people that if you gave me a random list of goods or services, I can find them quicker in downtown Kabul than I can in midtown Manhattan. Doing business in Afghanistan is far from absurd. And in fact, from a political perspective, given that economic growth and stability are the only ways out of this conflict, it is the most sane thing we can do.

Earlier this week we discussed the recent announcement that Seventh Generation is teaming up with Walmart in a strategic partnership that will see the green cleaning brand sell products in 1,500 Walmart stores. It’s the most unlikely of alliances, considering that Seventh Generation’s co-founder has said in the past that “hell would freeze over before Seventh Generation would ever do business with Walmart.” But at the same time, the partnership has been a long time coming, Jeffrey Hollender explains to FastCompany.com.

“They aren’t the same company they were when I said what I said,” Hollender concedes. “I’m the first one to admit that I was naive in thinking it was impossible for them to change.”

Hollender’s thinking has slowly changed since meeting with former Walmart CEO Lee Scott in 2005. At the time, Walmart was “fundamentally unwilling to engage in dialogue with its critics.” But thanks to guidance from Seventh Generation and a slew of other organizations, Walmart has slowly come around–and in many cases, it has bested its competitors in the sustainability arena.

“I think that the fact that we were as persistent for so many years
being engaged with helping [Walmart] become more sustainable
helped contribute to positive change, which led to us reexamining
and ultimately changing our perspective,” Hollender says.

Walmart still has a long way to go, of course. The company’s Sustainability Consortium is a start, but Hollender has plenty of other ideas on his wish list. “I think there are huge opportunities for them to push companies to not include chemicals that are proven to be unsafe,” Hollender says. Walmart could also stand to improve its abysmal labor practices.

But as Hollender explains, the Walmart of today is hardly recognizable compared to the Walmart of, say, 2006. “Our
conclusion is that they are doing more than most. When we see a
potential partner exhibit the amount of change that they’ve exhibited over
the past three years or so years, it warrants you to reevaluate your position.”

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Photograph by Nicholas Calcott

Logistics Manager, Doctors Without Borders
Bordeaux, France

Bouhabib, 43, worked with Doctors Without Borders’ R&D teams to transform inflatable tent structures into fully functioning hospitals.

“In 2004, we saw these inflatable tents that had been developed for the Italian Army and approached the manufacturer directly, hoping to develop a hospital with surgical facilities. When we first tried it out in 2005, after the earthquake in Pakistan, setup took almost twice as long as it did in Haiti in January. The hospital itself is nine tents, totaling 1,400 square meters, with 100 beds. But the process isn’t just inflating tents. It’s setting up all the electric, all the supplies. It’s putting the biomedical equipment in place, testing it, making sure it’s operational. We use PVC walls and floors to create a completely sealed structure within the tents, which keeps it clean and sterile and makes the tents flexible. Initially, we needed more operating theaters. As time goes on, we need more room for general medical activity. We recently opened an outpatient department.”

While you were sleeping, innovation was buying up domain names, and readying itself for a launch with large retail displays that look like something from Superman’s home planet, Krypton.

1. Around 4 million barrels of oil from the Deepwater spill has gone missing, according to the Washington Post. As well as having been cleaned up by nature, the unaccounted oil could also be in the air, or even floating in the water like a “toxic fog.” Oceanographer John Kessler thinks that, wherever it is, the oil could remain in the environment from a year up to decades. Meanwhile, Shell has posted its Q2 financial report: profit is $4.39 billion, above analysts’ expectations, while BP’s Photoshopping exploits have been added to by readers from Gizmodo and Wired.

2. The Obama administration wants to let the FBI have access to a person’s Internet activity without the need for a court order. Four words, “electronic communication transactional records” are to be added to the bill, which will affect anyone suspected of terrorism or intelligence activities. Meanwhile, the CIA and Google are both investing in a firm called Recorded Future, which monitors the Web, says Wired’s Noah Schachtman.

3. BlackPad. Is this the name of BlackBerry maker RIM’s tablet? The firm has purchased the domain name BlackPad.com, the name of which has been mooted for some time now. As for AT&T’s mysterious displays sprouting up in its shops, rather like malevolent girders or bad sci-fi effects, we’re putting that down to the Canadian firm as well, whose BlackBerry 9800 is arriving–probably–on Tuesday.

4. Plankton is declining
at a rate of 1% a year, say marine scientists from Dalhousie University
in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As well as providing food for whales,
phytoplankton also absorbs carbon. “This decline will need to be
considered in future studies of marine ecosystems, geochemical cycling,
ocean circulation and fisheries,” say the authors of the paper.

5. And finally, another day, another Facebook product. The social network has rolled out Facebook Questions in public beta form, which allows users to access questions either via a randomizer (ChatRoulette! Scream!) or by topic. GigaOm has the gen on it, while the Valleywag blog has all the juice on Mark Zuckerberg. To be honest, it’s a bit stalky–but there’s a certain amount of fascination to be had gawking at the Facebook founder’s life through a lens.

Photograph by Nicholas Calcott

Logistics Manager, Doctors Without Borders
Bordeaux, France

Bouhabib, 43, worked with Doctors Without Borders’ R&D teams to transform inflatable tent structures into fully functioning hospitals.

“In 2004, we saw these inflatable tents that had been developed for the Italian Army and approached the manufacturer directly, hoping to develop a hospital with surgical facilities. When we first tried it out in 2005, after the earthquake in Pakistan, setup took almost twice as long as it did in Haiti in January. The hospital itself is nine tents, totaling 1,400 square meters, with 100 beds. But the process isn’t just inflating tents. It’s setting up all the electric, all the supplies. It’s putting the biomedical equipment in place, testing it, making sure it’s operational. We use PVC walls and floors to create a completely sealed structure within the tents, which keeps it clean and sterile and makes the tents flexible. Initially, we needed more operating theaters. As time goes on, we need more room for general medical activity. We recently opened an outpatient department.”

While you were sleeping, innovation was buying up domain names, and readying itself for a launch with large retail displays that look like something from Superman’s home planet, Krypton.

1. Around 4 million barrels of oil from the Deepwater Spill has gone missing, according to the Washington Post. As well as having been cleaned up by nature, the unaccounted oil could also be in the air, or even floating in the water like a “toxic fog.” Oceanographer John Kessler thinks that, wherever it is, the oil could remain in the environment from a year up to decades. Meanwhile, Shell has posted its Q2 financial report: profit is $4.39 billion, above analysts’ expectations, while BP’s photoshopping exploits have been added to by readers from Gizmodo and Wired.

2. The Obama administration wants to let the FBI have access to a person’s Internet activity without the need for a court order. Four words, “electronic communication transactional records” are to be added to the bill, which will affect anyone suspected of terrorism or intelligence activities. Meanwhile, the CIA and Google are both investing in a firm called Recorded Future, which monitors the web, says Wired’s Noah Schachtman.

3. BlackPad. Is this the name of Blackberry maker RIM’s tablet? The firm has purchased the domain name BlackPad.com, the name of which has been mooted for some time now. As for AT&T’s mysterious displays sprouting up in its shops, rather like malevolent girders or bad sci-fi effects, we’re putting that down to the Canadian firm as well, whose BlackBerry 9800 is arriving–probably–on Tuesday.

4. Plankton is declining
at a rate of 1% a year, say marine scientists from Dalhousie University
in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As well as providing food for whales,
phytoplankton also absorbs carbon. “This decline will need to be
considered in future studies of marine ecosystems, geochemical cycling,
ocean circulation and fisheries,” say the authors of the paper.

5. And finally, another day, another Facebook product. The social network has rolled out Facebook Questions in public beta form, which allows users to access questions either via a randomizer (ChatRoulette! Scream!) or by topic. GigaOm has the gen on it, while the Valleywag blog has all the juice on Mark Zuckerberg. To be honest, it’s a bit stalky–but there’s a certain amount of fascination to be had gawking at the Facebook founder’s life through a lens.