In today’s Bulldog wrapup of science and technology news:

  • A new study explores how long humans can live
  • Concerns continue about access to Yahoo email
  • Arrest of NSA contractor raises ‘insider’ concerns
  • Spain is looking into Facebook/WhatsApp data deal

The details:

  • How long can people live? New study suggests there’s a limit

Just how long can people live?

New research suggests there may be a limit to our life span — one that’s hard to extend without some sort of breakthrough that fixes all age-related problems.

The record for the world’s oldest person is 122 years and the odds of shattering that record are slim, according to an analysis published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“It seems extremely difficult if not impossible to break through that ceiling due to the complexity of the aging process,” one of the researchers, Jan Vijg, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said in an email.

Life expectancies in many countries have risen dramatically because of improvements in medical care and sanitation in the last century. The maximum age of death has also increased, leading some to believe that there’s no boundary to how long people can live.

In the new study, researchers analyzed mortality data from a global database. They found that while there have been strides in reducing deaths among certain groups — children, women during childbirth and the elderly — the rate of improvement was slower for the very old, those over 100 years old.

Next they examined how old centenarians were when they died. The record holder is Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived until 122 years old. Since her death in 1997, no one has broken her record.

The researchers calculated the odds of someone reaching 125 years in a given year are less than 1 in 10,000. They think the human life span more likely maxes out at 115 years.

  • Reported Yahoo email scanning revives surveillance concerns

Yahoo’s reported willingness to search user email to assist U.S. government investigators has revived concerns about court-approved surveillance programs that companies aren’t allowed to disclose to the people using their services.

Last year, Yahoo modified an existing version of its email security program to flag the appearance of a digital “signature” the U.S. had linked to a foreign terrorist group backed by another government, according to a report published Wednesday by The New York Times. Copies of any incoming email containing the signature were stored in Yahoo’s system and made available to the FBI.

The Times quoted an unnamed government official, following up an earlier Reuters story that had revealed Yahoo’s email scanning activity without specifying what kind of information the government sought.

The revelations have conjured memories of a data-collection program set up by the National Security Agency and major internet companies a few years ago under other court orders issued in secret.

That program, called “Prism,” only became public knowledge in 2013 after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked slides revealing that the government had been authorized to grab emails, videos and pictures stored by Google, Yahoo and Facebook, among other companies.

As with Prism, the U.S. government appears to have demanded Yahoo’s cooperation in an effort to sniff out terrorist threats and protect public safety. The government said Prism targeted the specific online accounts of foreigners.

The Yahoo hunt may have cut a much broader swath, scanning through hundreds of millions of incoming emails in search of the signature used by the foreign terrorist group, said Kurt Opsahl, general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. He likened it to the government getting a court order to rifle through the documents stored in millions of homes in search of a particular piece of information.

  • NSA contractor arrest highlights challenge of insider threat

The arrest of a National Security Agency contractor for allegedly stealing classified information was the second known case of a government contractor being publicly accused of removing secret data from the intelligence agency since 2013.

The latest arrest came despite efforts to reform security after the Edward Snowden disclosures, especially in regards to insider threats.

Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, was arrested by the FBI in August after federal prosecutors say he illegally removed highly classified information and stored the material in his home and car. A defense attorney said Martin did not intend to betray his country.

  • VIDEO: Watch a summary of the story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQ2xxSaJRQ

The arrest was not made public until Wednesday, when the Justice Department released a criminal complaint that accused Martin of having been in possession of top-secret information that could cause “exceptionally grave danger” to national security if disclosed.

The fact that Snowden and now Martin — both working for Booz Allen Hamilton ascontractors for NSA — were able to leave the NSA with highly classified documents, especially given the supposed security upgrades put into place, begs the question as to whether the intelligence agency’s efforts to tighten internal security afterward were effective or adequate. The NSA declined to comment.

“One key thing we don’t have visibility into now, is how he was caught, because that would provide some insight into whether the reforms that were put in post-Snowden were effective or not, or their relative efficacy,” said Rajesh De, who was the NSA’sgeneral counsel when the Snowden story broke and remained there until last year. Snowden’s 2013 theft of documents that were leaked to journalists revealed the NSA’sbulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records.

  • Spanish agency to probe Facebook/WhatsApp data swap deal

Spain’s data protection agency says it will investigate whether the recently announced exchange of personal data between WhatsApp and Facebook meets Spanish data protection legislation.

The watchdog body said it will study what information collected from WhatsApp users is sent to Facebook, for what purpose, how long it is kept and what options customers are offered if they wish to object.

It said it will coordinate with its counterparts in Germany, Italy and Britain, which have announced similar probes.

Facebook took over the WhatsApp messaging service two years ago and announced recently that WhatsApp would begin sharing user data with the social network as part of a program to synchronize the two businesses.

The agency announced its investigation in a statement Wednesday.