Friday, February 24, 2012


Well, well... This holds out some hope for our local decryption case – the arguments even seem similar.
Eleventh Circuit Finds Fifth Amendment Right Against Self Incrimination Protects Against Being Forced to Decrypt Hard Drive Contents
February 24, 2012 by Dissent
Orin Kerr writes:
The important decision is In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated March 25, 2011. From the opinion by Judge Tjoflat:
We hold that the act of Doe’s decryption and production of the contents of the hard drives would sufficiently implicate the Fifth Amendment privilege. We reach this holding by concluding that (1) Doe’s decryption and production of the contents of the drives would be testimonial, not merely a physical act; and (2) the explicit and implicit factual communications associated with the decryption and production are not foregone conclusions.
Read more on The Volokh Conspiracy.


Why Johnny needs his own (used, less powerful) computer.
"PC Pro's Davey Winder has revealed how pre-school children are being targeted by data thieves. Security vendors have uncovered a bunch of Flash-based games, colorful and attractive to young kids, which came complete with a remote access trojan. The trojan is usually installed behind a button to download more free games, but BitDefender even found one painting application where the very act of swiping the paintbrush over an online pet to change the color of the virtual animal was enough to trigger redirection to an infected site."


Interesting how this type of case can be delayed and hidden...
Accused pretexters enter mystery plea in old HP spy case
A father-and-son team of private investigators charged with crimes relating to Hewlett-Packard's infamous spy scandal entered a plea yesterday in federal court, but that plea was immediately placed under seal by the court.
It's unclear why the pleas were sealed, as related court documents have not been posted publically. But in general, a court has the right to seal documents if they contain issues of confidentiality that outweigh the public's right to access court proceedings and records. In this case, the parties [both sides? Bob] requested the proceedings be sealed, and presiding U.S. District Court Judge D. Lowell Jensen granted that request, his clerk confirmed.
… The secrecy surrounding the case leaves us wondering whether this is just the end of a very old saga, or perhaps--less likely this far down the pike--it's the beginning of a larger federal case targeting those who hired the DePantes' firm to begin with.


Is this the new fingerprint? I wonder if there was any attempt to use fingerprints for more than identification? “People whose prints swirl to the left are always Communists!”
Court OKs Taking DNA From Felony Arrestees
February 24, 2012 by Dissent
David Kravets writes:
A federal appeals court Thursday upheld a voter-approved measure requiring California authorities to take a DNA sample from every adult arrested on felony accusations in the Golden State.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the challenge in hopes of striking down the measure, argued that DNA sampling of arrestees was an unconstitutional Fourth Amendment search and privacy breach. A lower court had refused to stop the program that has resulted in California securing a DNA database of more than 1.5 million people.
Read more on Threat Level. Obviously, I disagree with the court’s ruling and hope this eventually makes it to the Supreme Court, as I think if these DNA-on-arrest laws stand, why not just arrest everyone in the country and charge them with a felony so you can compile a massive national database? Couldn’t/wouldn’t happen, you say? Didn’t it already happen with our telecommunications being swooped up in nets without warrants?


This is praiseworthy, but I can't help flashing on the thought that it could become mandatory (for the children) and an entire generation will no longer find pain relief in opiates...
"Scientists at Mexico's National Institute of Psychiatry are working on a vaccine that makes the body resistant to the effects of heroin, so users would no longer get a rush of pleasure. The researchers say they have successfully tested the vaccine on mice and are preparing to test it on humans. Mice given the vaccine showed a huge drop in heroin consumption. 'It would be a vaccine for people who are serious addicts, who have not had success with other treatments and decide to use this application to get away from drugs.'"


One puny little protest against a “spying on the serfs” bill can't override years of “we need this (without wasting time on warrants)” whining from intelligence and law enforcement. “Do we really” is not in the political lexicon.
How Internet Companies Would Be Forced to Spy on You Under H.R. 1981
February 24, 2012 by Dissent
Rainey Reitman writes:
Online commentators are pointing to the Internet backlash against H.R. 1981 as the new anti-SOPA movement. While this bill is strikingly different from the Stop Online Piracy Act, it does have one thing in common: it’s a poorly-considered legislative attempt to regulate the Internet in a way experts in the field know will have serious civil liberties consequences. This bill specifically targets companies that provide commercial Internet access – like your ISP – and would force them to collect and maintain data on all of their customers, even if those customers have never been suspected of committing a crime.
Under H.R. 1981, which has the misleading title of Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, Congress would force commercial Internet access providers to keep for one year a “log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.” Let’s break that down into simple terms.
Read more on EFF.

(Related) Some nice words, but unrelated to reality? (see above) Will we look back some day and say “This was the point where everything changed” OR “What ever happened to this?”
The White House issues plan to protect consumer privacy
A “fact sheet” issued by the White House outlines a proposed Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights:
  1. INDIVIDUAL CONTROL: Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it.
  2. TRANSPARENCY: Consumers have a right to easily understandable and accessible information about privacy and security practices.
  3. RESPECT FOR CONTEXT: Consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
  4. SECURITY: Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
  5. ACCESS AND ACCURACY: Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data is inaccurate.
  6. FOCUSED COLLECTION: Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
  7. ACCOUNTABILITY: Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
You can read the full plan (60 pp., pdf) on whitehouse.gov.


I've mentioned before that Judge Lamberth seems to have that “logic stuff” down pat. (and he has a way with language!)
Crude tweeter gets unmasked when grand jury investigates whether tweets were just obnoxious speech or threats
February 24, 2012 by Dissent
Yet another Twitter subpoena to unmask an anonymous tweeter. Once again Twitter notified the user of the subpoena to give him a chance to file a motion to quash. News coverage here and here.
Kudos to Judge Lamberth for allowing the Twitter user to file the motion to quash anonymously, despite how distasteful his tweets were. The judge denied the motion to quash on the basis that any threat against a presidential candidate has to be investigated/taken seriously. The judge notes, however, that he doubts the investigation would result in an indictment as the speech does not appear to pose a credible threat even if the language of at least one tweet is a prima facie threat.


What a fun can of worms could be! But everyone knows lawyers just use “standard forms” (copyrighted by Ben Franklin) and merely fill in (their version of) the facts.
February 23, 2012
Lawyers Sue Westlaw and Lexis Over Publication of Briefs
Via WSJ Law Blog: "Two lawyers are taking on legal database providers Westlaw and LexisNexis with what appears to be a novel interpretation of copyright law. Edward L. White, a Oklahoma City, Okla., lawyer, and Kenneth Elan, claim WestLaw and LexisNexis have engaged in “unabashed wholesale copying of thousands of copyright-protected works created by, and owned by, the attorneys and law firms who authored them” — namely publicly filed briefs, motions and other legal documents."

(Related) One good copyright article deserve a second...
Joustin’ Beaver App Maker Served A Cease & Desist Order From Justin Bieber
A mobile game created to parody Canada’s biggest teenybopper export in years was just asking for trouble, and that’s what it’s gotten: the developers behind ‘Joustin’ Beaver,’ a mobile game available for iOS and Android devices, have been served with a cease and desist order from lawyers representing Justin Bieber.
… RC3 has responded: “The game is a parody and is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Nowhere in the game is Justin Bieber’s name, photo, image, or life story mentioned.”


I don't need to worry about this, but a certain professor at the law school should remember the pseudonym I use...
February 23, 2012
EFF - How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect
EFF shows you how: "It is important to note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. More information here. On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future."


No good deed goes unpunished and no device that makes textbooks cheap is as cheap as marketing makes it look... It's always the little things...
Will an Avalanche of iPads Crush Business Networks?
Are Apple’s iPads about to overwhelm corporate networks?
The research firm Gartner says that unless businesses plan for it, they could require three times the amount of wireless coverage in order to support the iPad on corporate networks.
The issue? Well, iPads are bandwidth hogs, and they have weaker wireless radios than most laptops. That means that — just like most mobile phones — they can’t connect to an access point as well as a laptop. And with more and more iPads and phones coming on the network, companies that want to support them are going to need to bump up Wi-Fi access points … a lot.


For people like me, who are too cheap to own a smartphone?
Easily send a text message to any phone in the United States, free of charge, regardless of where you live. You will get the responses in your email, and can even respond to responses using email. It’s all at TextPort, a site that makes sending SMS messages from your computer easy.
We’ve shown you how to send a free SMS to any phone via email, but doing so requires you know which carrier all of your friends are on. TextPort figures this out for you, letting you send a quick SMS to any phone number in the US for free. It offers a few other worthwhile tools as well, including a reverse number lookup and a few pay features.


Of course, if I did have a phone.... This also fits my “Ubiquitous Surveillance” category
Recording the audio of your meetings is easy; but it is all a different matter when you need to transcript the audio and share it with other meeting attendees. What you could use is an app that records audio, converts it to text, and let you share the audio as well as the transcription. This is precisely what an Android app called SaveMeeting offers.
SaveMeeting is a phone application for Android devices. The app is free, sized at 1.5 MB, and compatible with devices running Android version 2.2 or later. Using the app, you can begin recording audio anytime and upload it online by adding details to it. Details include meeting title, project title, meeting date, number of attendees, etc. Your recorded audio of a meeting is uploaded online to your SaveMeeting account and can be easily shared with other users on the site.
Similar tools: NoteRec,

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)