http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081229060920145
UK: Government departments losing a computer every day
Monday, December 29 2008 @ 06:09 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
More than 2,800 computers belonging to Whitehall departments have been mislaid or stolen since 2002, the equivalent of more than seven per week, new figures disclosed. The total included 1,774 laptops and 1,035 desktop systems.
The figures also showed that 676 mobile phones have been lost or stolen over the past seven years. Meanwhile, 202 hard drives and 195 memory sticks also went missing.
Source - The Telegraph
...because...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081229060331213
Data "Dysprotection:" breaches reported last week
Monday, December 29 2008 @ 06:03 AM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
A recap of incidents or privacy breaches reported last week for those who enjoy shaking their head and muttering to themselves with their morning coffee.
Source - Chronicles of Dissent
It's easy to justify policy because “everyone else is doing it.” It's harder to find a logical reason.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_dna_testing_wash.html
Wash. legislator to introduce DNA testing bill
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Last updated December 28, 2008 11:49 a.m. PT
TACOMA, Wash. -- Rep. Mark Miloscia, D-Federal Way, says he plans to introduce a bill in the 2009 Legislature that will put the state on the same page [By that logic, we could be on the same page as the Chinese, or George Orwell, or Attila the Hun. Bob] with the federal government on the subject of DNA testing.
... "We take their fingerprints, their pictures and their address when they are arrested," Miloscia said. "What's wrong with taking their DNA? We would throw their DNA away if they aren't convicted. It's not something you can abuse in any way." [So much illogic in such a short space. Bob]
Related? (We could take a page from India's book!) What will the subpoena look like? Technology will lead us to the Utopian state of “We don't need no lawyers”
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020170.html
December 28, 2008
New on LLRX.com: Neurolaw and Criminal Justice
Neurolaw and Criminal Justice: Ken Strutin's article highlights selected recent publications, news sources and other online materials concerning the applications of cognitive research to criminal law as well as basic information on the science and technology involved.
Speaking of logic... (The comments point out some of the illogic...)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F29%2F0140251&from=rss
The Slippery Legal Slope of Cartoon Porn
Posted by timothy on Monday December 29, @07:55AM from the in-a-perfect-world-the-topic-would-not-arise dept. Censorship The Courts News
BenFenner writes
"Two out of the three Virginia judges involved with Dwight Whorley's case say cartoon images depicting sex acts with children are considered child pornography in the United States. Judge Paul V. Niemeyer noted the PROTECT Act of 2003, clearly states that 'it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.'"
Heaven forbid I would suggest that this is the tip of an electronic invasion...
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F29%2F0155249&from=rss
Walmart Photo Keychain Comes Preloaded With Malware
Posted by timothy on Sunday December 28, @11:46PM from the caveat-maxima-emptor dept. Security Bug Toys Worms
Blowit writes
"With the Christmas holidays just past and opening up your electronic presents may get you all excited, but not for a selected lot of people who got the Mercury 1.5" Digital Photo Frame from Walmart (or other stores). My father-in-law attached the device to his computer and his Trend Micro Anti-virus screamed that a virus is on the device. I scanned the one I have and AVAST did not find any virus ... So I went to Virscan.org to see which vendors found what, and the results are here and here."
Update: 12/29 05:44 GMT by T : The joy is even more widespread; MojoKid points out that some larger digital photo frames have been delivered similarly infected this year, specifically Samsung's SPF-85H 8-inch digital photo frame, sold through Amazon among other vendors, which arrived with "W32.Sality.AE worm on the installation disc for Samsung Frame Manager XP Version 1.08, which is needed for using the SPF-85H as a USB monitor." Though Amazon was honest enough to issue an alert, that alert offers no reason to think that only Amazon's stock was affected.
A very risky trial. What if he proves what he says?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20081228171144711
S.F. computer engineer to stand trial
Sunday, December 28 2008 @ 05:11 PM EST Contributed by: PrivacyNews
A judge has ordered a computer engineer to stand trial on tampering charges for allegedly taking over the cyberspace network he designed for the city of San Francisco and refusing to reveal the passwords to access the system.
After an eight-day preliminary hearing, Superior Court Judge Paul Alvarado ruled Wednesday that prosecutors had produced enough evidence of Terry Childs' probable guilt to hold him for trial on four felony charges of tampering with a computer network, denying other authorized users access to the network and causing more than $200,000 in losses.
Source - San Francisco Chronicle
[From the article:
Prosecutors said city officials have estimated that San Francisco spent at least $1.45 million in attempts to regain control of the network and assess its vulnerability to intrusions.
Childs' lawyers have denied any destructive intent and said he was trying to protect the network from incompetent officials whose meddling endangered the system he had built.
For my Computer Forensics class (and for the humor)
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F28%2F2215211&from=rss
Entire Transcript of RIAA's Only Trial Now Online
Posted by timothy on Sunday December 28, @06:12PM from the give-us-this-day-our-daily-fix dept. The Courts
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes
"The entire transcript of the RIAA's 'perfect storm', its first and only trial, which resulted in a $222,000 verdict in a case involving 24 MP3's having a retail value of $23.76, is now available online. After over a year of trying, we have finally obtained the transcript of the Duluth, Minnesota, jury trial which took place October 2, 2007, to October 4, 2007, in Capitol Records v. Thomas. Its 643 pages represent a treasure trove for (a) lawyers representing defendants in other RIAA cases, (b) technologists anxious to see how a MediaSentry investigator and the RIAA's expert witness combined to convince the jurors that the RIAA had proved its case, and (c) anybody interested in finding out about such things as the early-morning October 4th argument in which the RIAA lawyer convinced the judge to make the mistake which forced him to eventually vacate the jury's verdict, and the testimony of SONY BMG's Jennifer Pariser in which she 'misspoke' according to the RIAA's Cary Sherman when she testified under oath that making a copy from one's CD to one's computer is 'stealing'. The transcript was a gift from the 'Joel Fights Back Against RIAA' team defending SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston, Massachusetts. I have the transcript in 3 segments: October 2nd (278 pages(PDF), October 3rd (263 pages)(PDF), and October 4th (100 pages)(PDF)."
It sure looks like they (the Democrats) will be throwing money around. Can we find a token Democrat and come up with a not-entirely-silly proposal to attract a few million?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F28%2F1630207&from=rss
How Can the Stimulus Plan Help the Internet?
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 28, @12:35PM from the daddy-needs-a-new-pair-of-e-shoes dept.
Wired is running an article raising the question of how a US economic stimulus plan could best help broadband adoption and the internet in general. We discussed President-elect Obama's statements about his plan, which would include investments in such areas, but Wired asks how we can avoid the equivalent of the New Deal's "ditches to nowhere" without more data about where the money would actually make a difference. Quoting:
"... the problem is that no one knows the best way to make the internet more resilient, accessible and secure, since there's no just no public data. The ISP and backbone internet providers don't tell anyone anything. For instance, the government doesn't know how many people actually have broadband or what they pay for it. ... In September, the FCC found that its data collection on internet broadband was incomplete and thus ruled that AT&T, Qwest and Verizon could stop filing some reports — because the requirements did not extend to cable companies, too."
Provides a lot of background if you read carefully (and include the comments)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F28%2F1317241&from=rss
Matt Blaze Examines Communications Privacy
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 28, @09:48AM from the still-a-lot-left-to-lose dept. Privacy Communications Government United States
altjira writes
"Matt Blaze analyzes the implications of a recent Newsweek story on the Bush administration's use of the NSA for domestic spying on communications, and questions whether the lower legal threshold for the collection of communications metadata is giving away too much to the government: 'As electronic communication pervades more of our daily lives, transaction records — metadata — can reveal quite a bit about us, indeed often much more than a few out-of-context conversations might. Aggregated into databases with other people's records (or perhaps everyone's records) and analyzed by powerful software, metadata by itself can paint a remarkably detailed picture of connections, relationships, and other patterns that could never be recovered simply from listening to the conversations themselves.'"
Research made easy? I think it just points out (almost) all the places you should have looked but didn't.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020171.html
December 28, 2008
New on LLRX.com: Deep Web Research 2009
Deep Web Research 2009: Marcus P. Zillman's guide includes links to: articles, papers, forums, audios and videos, cross database articles, search services and search tools, peer to peer, file sharing, grid/matrix search engines, presentations, resources on deep web research, semantic web research, and bot research resources and sites.
Inevitable. But what should it look like?
http://ces.cnet.com/8301-19167_1-10126165-100.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
High hopes at Yahoo, Intel for Internet-enabled TV
Posted by Stephen Shankland December 29, 2008 4:00 AM PST
Now here's a tool I can use. Lots of podcasts are too soft for easy listening. Plus: Another way teenagers can ruin their hearing! (Perhaps some forensic uses too?)
http://www.killerstartups.com/Video-Music-Photo/vloud-com-making-everything-sound-better
Vloud.com - Making Everything Sound Better
Vloud is a new online tool that has a very specific appeal, yet it will no doubt be a welcome addition to the bookmark collection of many of us.
Broadly speaking, what this web-hosted tool does is to let you upload a MP3 file and have it automatically processed in order to bring up its volume. The uploaded files can amount to as much as 10 MB, and WAV files are supported alongside MP3s.
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