Law

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Casio - Cheap. Reliable. Actionable?

Via Boing Boing , I found this story that’s both a) heartwarming-ish and b) illuminating. I wasn’t up to speed on the Casio F-91w, which is a cheap and reliable digital watch common throughout the developing world. As it turns out, thanks to a terrorist who wrote instructions on how to use a Casio F-91w as a bomb timer, owning one of these watches goes on the scale when the Department of Defense weighs the evidence of your black terrorist heart, you terrorist. If you’re an analogy-lover, try this: because somebody used a Motorola Razr (hottest of hot cellphones, pre-iPhone) to call in a bomb threat, those who own Motorola Razr’s are de facto a step closer to being arrested than those who don’t. There are 28 instances of Guantanamo Bay detainees who have this watch listed as evidence against them .

So tongodeon of LiveJournal has been giving these watches to friends, and when given the opportunity he passed one, along with an explanatory letter, to President Obama during the campaign. He doesn’t claim that he has anything to do with the President’s decision to close Guantanamo within the year, but it still must feel great. Here’s hoping that more of us get our political Christmas presents in the near future.

22Jan2009 | John | Comments Off | Continued
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Reason #217 Why Secrecy Fucks Everything Up

On Thursday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, a "secret federal appeals court" as described by Wired , finally declassified an opinion from August of 2008 that approved of 2007 legislation giving warrant-less eavesdropping powers to the government when used on "international communications." Lest we forget, that includes phone calls where one end of the line is you, living in Kansas, so long as the other end is… oh, call it your sister visiting London. According to FISCR, that’s not an unreasonable breach of the Fourth Amendment , which says (I can’t help myself)

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Yes, calling your sister in London is probable cause that you’ve done something suspicious enough for the government to listen to your conversation. According to the opinion , which is redacted to keep out juicy bits like nouns ,  you were protected by all sorts of measures. For example, information gathering conducted on your phone call (in other words, the conversation)  "did not constitute electronic surveillance"… except that "[n]othing in the definition of electronic surveillance… shall be construed to encompass surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." What, that thing? Of course it’s not a tape recorder, you’re in Canada! (If that sentence doesn’t seem to make any sense, welcome to my world.)

I have to admit, I’m not really coming to any conclusions at the moment, I’m just a) steamed beyond belief, and b) assuming that not everybody keeps up with this stuff. And you should . Grrrr. Tune in next time, when I’ll go over the Attorney General-designate and his brave stand in defense of felony tresspassers.

17Jan2009 | John | Comments Off | Continued
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MBTA Plays It Smart, At Last

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="232" caption="photo by Ian Britton"] [/caption]

A few days ago, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) finally accepted that security problems should be solved, not suppressed. In August, three student researchers from MIT were going to present a paper at DEFCON (the tech / hacker convention) which outlined vulnerabilities in the magnetic stripe swipe card system that MBTA uses to handle fares in the "T" subway in Boston. Despite the fact that the students were going to leave out certain key information so that their work couldn’t be easily duplicated, MBTA filed for a restraining order, saying that disclosure of the flaws, before it has a chance to fix them, will cause irreparable harm to the transit system. (See more here .) The DEFCON talk was cancelled, and eventually they brought a lawsuit to permanently stop the release of information. Finally, they announced that they were dismissing their lawsuit and had agreed, instead, to work with the students to improve security in their Automated Fare Collection System.

Cory Doctorow coined Schneier’s Law in his DRM talk at Microsoft in 2006:

"Any person can invent a security system so clever that he or she can’t imagine a way of breaking it." This means that the only experimental methodology for discovering if you’ve made mistakes in your cipher is to tell all the smart people you can about it and ask them to think of ways to break it. Without this critical step, you’ll eventually end up living in a fool’s paradise, where your attacker has broken your cipher ages ago and is quietly decrypting all her intercepts of your messages, snickering at you."

Clearly, MBTA was trying to stay in that "fool’s paradise," but somehow or other they clued in to the reality of the situation. Good on them; I just hope that there isn’t some behind-the-scenes deal that’s quietly screwing the students who did the yeoman’s work of advancing the security of MBTA’s system.

(I know, I said no more EFF posts this year, but I’m not begging for money this time… )

29Dec2008 | John | Comments Off | Continued
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EFF One Last Time… Well, This Year

First thing’s first - I get nothing out of these EFF posts. I’m not sending you to an affiliate link, there’s no kickback, nothing like that. The closest thing to "what’s in it for me" is that my quasi sister-in-law works there, but in all sincerity I was an EFF geek before I ever met my beloved, so that’s just a happy coincidence. She’s always mildly bemused (and take your pick which "she" I’m referring to) that I’m a little star-struck by somebody who seems to have a normal-seeming job.

That being said, EFF has a new page up that’s a) cute and b) effectively (hur hur) describes what they’ve been up to for the past year. Please do check it out, and if it tugs at you at all, consider joining EFF or making a donation. The internet you save could be your own.

22Dec2008 | John | Comments Off | Continued
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Join EFF!

There are a lot of charitable causes in the world. Heaps. Tons , even. The one that gets my support these days is the Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF"), "the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world." I know, there are a lot of causes out there that might feel more immediate - curing cancer, say, or providing service animals to the blind. That’s easy; everybody can get behind those causes. I can explain to my grandmother that blind people get along better with a dog, and she’ll pony up twenty bucks. On the other hand, if I tell grams that the EFF is behind the lawsuit to hold AT&T accountable for facilitating illegal NSA spying , or that they’re safe-guarding the future of cultural innovation , I’m going to be rewarded with a blank look. So here’s the thing - because I do understand what EFF does, and why it’s important, I’ve got a responsibility to support them on behalf of myself and those that are unwittingly protected by them .

And so do you. At least, I hope you think so, because EFF needs your help. To quote a recent email I received, "[d]ue to the tough economic times we are all experiencing (and maybe folks with spare cash to spend on activism feeling tapped out after the election), EFF is not getting the usual end-of-the-tax-year donation love." As a result, this non-profit organization that, to the best of my knowledge, never charges their clients for representation, is coming up short. Trust me on this, there are a lot of top-flight lawyers at EFF that are working waaaaaaaaaay below their market value because they believe in what they’re doing, but they (and EFF as an entity) still have bills to pay.

Please consider becoming a member of EFF. You can become a member here and get cool swag to boot, or just buy yourself some cool swag here . My personal favorites include the metal Bill of Rights card to set off airport security ("fun" fact: nobody will tell you under what law you’re being searched at the airport. It’s a secret. Now read the 4th Amendment .) and the mini LED flashlight specially designed to reveal the hidden tracking dots produced by laser printers . Whether you buy stuff or not, though, you really do owe it to yourself (as someone savvy enough to, at a minimum, read this blog) to help support this vital organization. Join EFF !

iContent/i by Cory Doctorow

Bonus for reading this far: I’ll blog more about this later, but read Cory Doctorow’s latest collection of essays (c)ontent, about some of these very things, for free! Cory releases his books under a Creative Commons license, so this is a legal download of the entire book . Some % of you will buy it, of course, which is the point. I say "bonus," but it’s not like he’s doing this just for me - it’s just something I figure you don’t know about. :D

11Dec2008 | John | Comments Off | Continued
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The Sordid, Sneaky Story of DarkMarket

All the way to th Eff, BEEEE, EYEEeeeee...

In October of 2004, a Secret Service sting centered around the website shadowcrew.com (no link because it’s now a generic parked domain) led to the arrest of 28 people involved in identity theft, credit card scamming and the like, and created a cascade effect that shuttered most of the other sites that facilitated trade in this kind of information. From the wreckage, DarkMarket.ws arose to fill the void. Known for its zeal in scrutinizing users to filter out narcs, the site had a solid reputation as a 1st rate den of thieves.

Inevitably, jealous competitors tried to knock them down a peg. In 2006, Max Ray Butler (a “security consultant” who turned to the darkside) claimed that he had infiltrated the darkmarket server and discovered that the site’s lead administrator, “Master Splyntr” was logging in from an FBI location in Pittsburgh. This was typical of the jousting between competing sites; Butler was later arrested for cyber crimes and darkmarket grew to be more popular than ever.

As it turns out, Butler was 100% right.

Click to continue reading “The Sordid, Sneaky Story of DarkMarket”

3Dec2008 | John | Comments Off | Continued
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Missing Metropolis Footage Found - How Cool Is That?

MetropolisI’m behind the times by a few weeks here, but I don’t recall hearing this before so I’m going to guess that some of you haven’t, either. Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis, a seminal work of science fiction and, in my opinion, cyberpunk was originally released in 1927 but after only one viewing was significantly edited by The Man (boooooo!). Really. Well, kinda. Like nowadays, the studio had a movie on its hands that it thought audiences wouldn’t understand, so they cut it. Unlike today, the original saw the light of day once. ANYWAY. Approximately 25% of the movie was cut, “never to be seen again.” The entire movie seemed to disappear for awhile, but then fragments of it started turning up. Like true geeks anywhere, the cinephiles made it one of their missions in life to piece the thing together as best they could, restore it, hug it, squeeze it, and call it “George.” Except for the missing 25%, the movie has been in a somewhat stable form for awhile now, a disfigured icon of the past.

That is, until this happened.

Apparently some archive in Argentina had acquired a nearly-complete print without realizing exactly what it is they had. First, duh. Second, OMG. The print is apparently in crap condition, but if Ted Turner can colorize Ingrid Bergman (excuse me for just a sec - hubba) in Notorious, the forces of Good should be able to counter with a restoration of this treasure. Efforts are already underway, but we shouldn’t expect anything for years. Still, that’s infinitely closer than this was a month ago.

Thanks to Alert Nerd for bringing this story to my attention!

25Jul2008 | John | Comments Off | Continued