Cyrus Farivar reports:
A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled
Wednesday in favor of a man accused of accessing child pornography through Tor,
finding that the warrant issued by a Virginia-based judge was invalid. The evidence of child pornography the government
claims it found on the man’s computers is suppressed, which likely makes
continuing prosecution of this case significantly more difficult.
Read more on Ars
Technica.
[From the article:
"It allowed government agents to conduct a borderless
dragnet search with no geographic limitation," J.W. Carney, Levin’s
lawyer, wrote
in a court filing. "Rule 41
simply does not permit a magistrate judge in Virginia to authorize the search
of the defendant’s computer located in Massachusetts."
Perspective.
Tom Randall reports:
On April 6, during a panel
discussion at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Global
Privacy Summit, officials from the Attorney General offices of New York,
Illinois and the District of Columbia highlighted the evolving focus of state
Attorneys General from high-profile retail data breaches to breaches involving
more sensitive personal data. Matthew
Van Hise, an official with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, noted that
as retailers are becoming more sophisticated in implementing their payment card
infrastructures, through chip-and-pin and other methods, state AGs are turning
their attention to breaches of personal health information, Social Security
numbers, and other highly sensitive data.
Read more on JDSupra.
Of course they will. After all, “we
gotta do something” to address this symptom of a bad tax code. (The code itself is too complicated and too
heavily lobbied to change.) Isn’t all of
this data attorney-client communication?
Wouldn’t that complicate thigs?
U.S.
launches ‘criminal investigation’ involving Panama Papers
… In a letter to
the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), U.S. Attorney
Preet Bharara wrote that his office had “opened a criminal investigation
regarding matters to which the Panama Papers are relevant,”
and he asked to speak with someone who
had worked on the project. [Rather wimpy.
If they say no, is that the end of the investigation? Bob] The Guardian newspaper, which was among
those to analyze the materials, posted a copy of the letter on its
website.
… President Obama
has noted, too, that those who want to find
loopholes in U.S. tax laws generally have not had a problem doing so.
“It’s not that they’re breaking the laws, it’s that the
laws are so poorly designed that they allow people, if they’ve got enough
lawyers and enough accountants, to wiggle out of responsibilities that ordinary
citizens are having to abide by,” Obama said.
(Related) Do you suppose Mr Bharara knew about this? Or did he deliberately not know about
it?
New York Wants Foreign Banks to Hand Over Panama Records
… New York’s Department of
Financial Services asked companies including Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse
Group AG, Commerzbank AG, ABN Amro Group NV and Societe Generale SA to provide
communications, telephone logs and records of other transactions between their
New York branches and employees or agents of the law firm, Mossack Fonseca
& Co. The banks aren’t accused of
wrongdoing. [Yet. Bob]
Good to know that
some technology works as promised.
Visa: Some
merchants see dip in fraud thanks to chip cards
… Among the 25
merchants who were suffering the most instances of counterfeit fraud at the end
of 2014, five that began processing credit and debit cards equipped with the
new EMV technology saw those infractions fall 18.3% as of the final quarter of
2015, says Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of risk products at Visa. Meanwhile, five of those merchants who were
not yet equipped to handle chip-enabled cards saw an increase in fraudulent
transactions of 11.4%.
Security (and Privacy) have become selling points. The FBI is going to have to learn to live
without being able to read the messages (email, phone calls, texts, etc.) it
intercepts.
Viber
Joins WhatsApp With End-to-End Encryption Protecting Privacy For Its 700
Million Users
It doesn't matter if you're chatting with a co-worker
about a sensitive business proposal you're putting together or bantering about
basketball playoffs with a group of buddies, the idea that a third-party could
be intercepting and reading your communication is creepy. Messaging providers are taking a privacy stand against such
things, including Viber, which is adding end-to-end encryption to its popular
platform.
Over 700 million people use Viber, more than enough to
make it a target for spying from hackers and even government organizations. But just as WhatsApp
has done for its more than 1 billion users, Viber's roll out of end-to-end
encryption will help keep prying eyes from seeing private communication, whether the government
likes it or not.
(Related) The more security the better?
Opera
Browser Piles On More Privacy With Free VPN Feature
The Opera OPESY 1.90% browser last month
gained a built-in
ad-blocking feature to help set it apart from the pack, and now it has made
itself even more distinctive with a free virtual private network (VPN) feature.
VPNs are handy security and privacy tools that route your
Internet activities through a distant connection — this can be useful for
protecting your browsing while you’re on public Wi-Fi, or accessing
region-restricted content from somewhere outside that region.
There are plenty of VPNs out there, and many can plug into
your browser to allow easier use, but Opera’s version is baked in from the
start. What’s more, it’s free and it
offers unlimited data usage.
For my Computer Security students.
Quick Tips
and Facts That’ll Help Avoid Vishing and Smishing Scams
Have you heard of vishing or smishing? Essentially, they’re both forms of phishing — vishing is done over the phone, and smishing is
done through text messages. Both
scams are designed to steal the victims information or money from them.
Thankfully, these scams can be avoided if you know what to
look for. The infographic below will
tell you everything you need to know to make sure you don’t become a victim.
As a Math teacher, I love to see Venn diagrams that summarize litigation.
Tech coalitions pen open letter to Burr and Feinstein over
bill banning encryption
Tempting. I could call all my
students at once and tell them what I think!
Facebook
Messenger Rolls Out Group Calling: You Can Now Phone Everyone In A Group Chat
Facebook Messenger has launched a group-calling feature
that allows users to simultaneously dial up to 50 friends online. Messenger's top executive, David Marcus,
announced via Facebook that the free service is rolling
out globally over the next 24 hours to all Messenger users with the latest
Android and iOS app updates.
Smart. But I bet I
can name the companies the “anti” lobbyists work for.
WiredWest: a Cooperative of Municipalities Forms to Build a
Fiber Optic Network
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 20, 2016
Western Massachusetts Towns Create a New Model for Last-Mile
Connectivity, but a State Agency Delays Approval and Funding – A case
study by David Talbot, Waide Warner, and Susan Crawford –
“WiredWest is a legal cooperative of 31 western
Massachusetts towns that has put forward a detailed proposal to provide
“last-mile” high-speed Internet access connections to homes and businesses in a
rural region suffering from poor Internet access. The project has encountered delays in
obtaining approvals and funding from a state agency called the Massachusetts
Broadband Institute (MBI), which is responsible for providing $50 million in
subsidies to solve the region’s Internet access problems. In this case study, we detail how WiredWest plans to finance the construction of a
state-of-the-art fiber optic network and then operate and provide services over
that network. WiredWest has
already secured deposits in the amount of $49 from more than 7,100
pre-subscribers, developed a financial model, and drafted an operating
agreement. It has taken a regional
approach to spread risk and achieve economies of scale, making the model
nationally relevant. (Another prominent
example of a telecommunications cooperative providing high-speed Internet
access is RS fiber, formed by 17 townships and 10 cities in Minnesota. RS Fiber is subject of this report by The Institute for Local Self Reliance.) The WiredWest cooperative network would
connect to an $89.7 million “middle-mile” fiber optic network built by MBI to
connect community institutions such as libraries, schools, hospitals, and
government buildings in 45 towns considered “unserved” (because they lack any
cable service), plus 79 other towns that had partial or full Internet access
services. While the middle-mile network
was meant to be the starting point for last-mile networks serving homes and businesses,
at the time of this report’s publication, only one of the 45 unserved towns,
Leverett, had built such a network. WiredWest would extend fiber’s benefits to a
far wider region. So far 24 of
WiredWest’s member towns have authorized borrowing a total of $38 million and
most of those towns support going forward as part of WiredWest. Under the plan, they will pay about two-thirds
of the network’s costs. To cover the
remainder, they will need to receive a portion of the $50 million in available
subsidies. But at the time of this
report MBI had tabled any decision on the project amid a wider review of the
last-mile program by the administration of Gov. Charlie Baker.”
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