Think this technology will be here in time to cast the results of the 2008 election into limbo? (That's a city in Florida)
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/54945.html
French Primary Voters to Cast Ballots Online
By Jenny Barchfield AP 01/02/07 8:07 AM PT
Although most French voters do not officially belong to political parties and are thus not eligible to participate in primaries, the country is watching the progress of the first election cycle that will allow voters to cast their ballots online. Much of the campaigning has been conducted on the Internet, as well.
France's governing party is gearing up for the country's first Web-based primary in a presidential campaign during which the Internet has acquired unprecedented importance.
The UMP party primary, which begins Tuesday, is not likely to be a nail biter: With only one candidate, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, on the virtual ballot, the outcome of the 10-day vote is all but certain.
Still, UMP leaders are hoping the online primary -- which is open only to its 330,000 members -- will mark a break with political convention and give the party an aura of tech-savvy modernity. [What aura do they have if they screw this up? Bob]
Platform Built Online
The conservative UMP is not the sole party to make the Internet a key element of its campaign in the run-up to France's two-round presidential elections in April and May. The opposition Socialists and also the extreme-right National Front, led by 78-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, have also relied heavily on their Web sites to seduce voters and pump up party ranks.
Though many French parties were on the Web in the last presidential elections in 2002, the impact of political sites has skyrocketed during this campaign, helping change the way politics are done here.
Socialist candidate Segolene Royal has made her Web site the cornerstone of a campaign based on what she calls "participative democracy," with users invited to take part in a host of online forums and debates. Royal, a former minister, drew on online feedback in drafting her platform, which she released chapter by chapter on the Web site.
Fortunately, this only impacts Wisconsin, which we all know is a hot bed for terrorists...
Wisconsin balks at anti-terror federal mandate
Wheeler News Service none - 01/02/2007
Wisconsin is balking at a federal mandate to verify 7 million birth and death records which date back to 1907.
The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee said "no" last month to spending $2 million dollars to jumpstart the process. It’s required under new anti-terrorism laws designed to prevent identity theft.
And if the state does not verify its birth and death records by May of 2008, Wisconsinites could lose the ID’s they need to fly on airplanes or enter federal buildings. That’s the same penalty which forced the state to make sure illegal immigrants no longer get driver’s licenses.
Now, the state figures it will cost $24 million to verify and double check birth and death records prior to 1993. Records from 1994 on are already computerized properly. [Non-sequitur? Bob]
John Kiesow, registrar, says an effort is underway to verify amendments to earlier records. [Like what? Bob]
Rep. Pedro Colon, D-Milwaukee, calls the mandate an “archaeological escapade” [I love new terms... Bob] and a waste of money. But Sen. Luther Olson, R-Berlin, says people need to prove who they are.
Tools & Techniques Giving new meaning to “spread 'em!”
Proposal expands DNA use by police
S.C. program would be nation's most-aggressive
BY YVONNE M. WENGER The Post and Courier
COLUMBIA - Police would have the power to seize DNA samples from anyone arrested for a crime - from shoplifting to murder - under legislation proposed by state lawmakers.
The measure would provide South Carolina with the most aggressive DNA sampling program in the nation, allowing authorities to collect a person's genetic profile for even petty offenses before he or she is tried for the crime.
... As far as concerns about civil rights violations, Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston, said the DNA collections would do just the opposite.
"There's a lot of pending cases in South Carolina, and some of those people are innocent and DNA would show that," Ford said. "I can see no violation."
It's illegal, so plan for it! (Good strategy!)
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1167386817011
Should You Design Your Firm's Web Site With Jurors in Mind?
By Henry Gottlieb New Jersey Law Journal 01-02-2007
Do jurors surf the Internet to learn about the lawyers in the case, despite judges' warnings that it's a no-no?
You bet they do, and some jury consultants advise firms to ponder, "What will jurors think of me after visiting my Web site?"
Lawyers intrigued by the advice should visit the home page of New Jersey insurance defense firm Bolan Jahnsen & Reardon in Shrewsbury. The site isn't targeting jurors, but the firm kept them in mind when writing the copy, managing partner Daniel Jahnsen says.
Besides information that portrays the firm as competent and experienced -- Jahnsen has tried 200 cases to verdict -- the site includes self-deprecating humor to suggest that the lawyers aren't stuffed shirts who take themselves too seriously.
The idea is that any juror who does browse by will appreciate the light touch.
"We want to humanize ourselves and show a sense of humor," Jahnsen says.
His biography, mostly about his experience, knowledge and achievements in court and on the lecture circuit, ends with, "Most of this is actually true. This stuff about lecturing, however, sounds more impressive than it is. No one has ever paid to listen to Dan talk."
Another bio jokes about a lawyer who learned to love beer in college.
Web designers and jury consultants who looked at the site say it might turn off potential clients and that some of the humor is over the top or falls flat. And some say using a Web site to get jurors to like you and gain an edge at a trial is a futile exercise.
But they also say firms that add jurors' potential impressions to the normal criteria in writing Web site material may be on the right track, because some jurors are looking, despite judges' admonitions.
"They're not supposed to but it doesn't mean they don't," Jahnsen says.
Model civil jury instructions in most states include general warnings to panelists against amateur investigating, like visiting accident scenes or studying the effects of diseases.
Recognizing that the electronic age has made such sleuthing easier, judges in New Jersey are mentioning the Internet in their admonitions. Indeed, the state Supreme Court's Committee on Model Civil Jury Charges is studying a draft rewrite of model charge 1.11(C) to include the Internet, cell phone messaging, chat rooms and Blackberries as off-limit sources for information about cases.
The committee is concerned about jurors using the Internet to satisfy curiosity about the substance of the trial, not the lawyers, says Kevin Wolfe, the judiciary's staff adviser to the committee. But that's something that may be addressed in the future, he says.
Middlesex County [N.J.] Superior Court Judge Lewis Paley says he already mentions the Internet in his general admonition to jurors. But he doesn't say specifically, "Don't Google the lawyers."
Even so, that's what juries are doing, consultants say.
Research has shown that jurors routinely disregard the instruction and want to find out as much as they can about everything related to the case, including the judges, witnesses and lawyers, [Should jurors be monitored while serving? Bob] says Richard Waites, based in the Houston office of 16-branch jury consulting firm, The Advocates.
"We have seen situations after a trial is over where a jury will say it knows something about a lawyer even though they may be coy about how they found it," Waites says. "It's obvious they found out only by the Internet," he says.
"If lawyers knew more about what jurors knew about them, they would be much more careful about what they put on their Web site," he says.
Waites says lawyers should root out anything that suggests a lawyer is biased or untrustworthy in coming to a fair resolution of the case.
For example, a juror could be turned off by a plaintiff's lawyer whose site includes chest thumping about huge awards the firm has won. "They forget that there are a lot of jurors, some of whom are defense-oriented who are going to their Web site," he says.
"If a defense lawyer gloats about the great victories he achieves for his defense clients -- that he wins 100 percent of the time -- or something that would show the lawyer is so defense-oriented he is biased or untrustworthy when it comes to fair resolution, it would kind of turn you off," he says.
Jurors read about lawyers during voir dire and again during trial, Bob Weiss, of Alyn-Weiss Associates, a Denver marketing consultant, wrote in the American Bar Association's Law Practice Today newsletter in July 2004.
"Defense counsel may want to soften their image of being Goliath's hired guns via the Web. Plaintiff's counsel may want to position themselves as champions of the Davids of the world."
"Whatever you convey on your site should be consistent with the impression you are trying to make to jurors in the courtroom. No jury consultant wants you to develop a credibility issue with the jury during trial," Weiss wrote.
Interesting indeed. Is this fighting fire with fire, or tossing gas on the flames? (What I'm asking is: can these “It's not fair!” types understand a rational response?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/02/2117236&from=rss
Starbucks Responds In Kind To Oxfam YouTube Video
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 02, @05:16PM from the better-latte-than-never dept. Communications The Internet
Kligmond writes "Last week, Starbucks placed a video on YouTube responding to a video posted by the Oxfam Charity. The Oxfam video was launched in conjunction with 'Starbucks Day of Action,' held December 16th, when activists visited Starbucks locations across the world in protest of the coffee retailer's alleged mistreatment of Ethiopian farmers. The Starbucks video calmly addresses the Oxfam allegations, citing an impasse over Ethiopian trademark legalities. Starbucks claims the refusal to sign a trademark agreement with Ethiopia is a stumbling block they hope to resolve on behalf of the farmers. The coffee chain's representative goes on to refute the contention that Starbucks refuses to pay a fair price for its coffee reserves and, in fact, routinely pays well above commodity price, and above fair trade price. Unlike many recent ineffectual corporate reactions to social journalism and networking eruptions, Starbucks' response is unique in that the corporation managed Oxfam's unconventional assault in a very unconventional way, via YouTube. Regardless of the outcome of this particular incident, the move on Starbucks' part comes off as unmistakably in touch with today's communication modes and methods."
Lots of citations here...
http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1167732122993
Why Most Document Retention Policies Are Ineffective
Kenneth L. Stein and Richard H. An The Privacy and Data Protection Legal Reporter January 3, 2007
Many companies have document retention policies in which paper and electronic documents are discarded or deleted after specified time periods, depending on the content and type of document. Those policies serve to keep sensitive information from getting into the hands of others, as well as to control the amount of physical and digital memory space needed to store documents. See Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 704 (2005). Some companies, for example, automatically delete e-mails older than 3 months, unless specifically saved by an employee. See Hynix Semiconductor, Inc. v. Rambus, Inc., No. C-00-20905 RMW, 2006 WL 565893, at *11 (N.D. Cal. 2006). Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have recognized that there is nothing wrong with such policies, even where they might result in the destruction of documents that might be material in a later lawsuit, as long as that lawsuit was not reasonably foreseen at the time the documents were destroyed. See Arthur Andersen, 544 U.S. at 704 ("It is, of course, not wrongful for a manager to instruct his employees to comply with a valid document retention policy under ordinary circumstances."); Samsung Elecs. Co. v. Rambus, Inc., 439 F. Supp. 2d 524, 543 (E.D. Va. 2006) (citing Arthur Andersen).
When it comes to electronic documents, however, common document retention policies do not achieve their goal of preventing sensitive information from falling into the hands of others. That is because deleting an e-mail or electronic document does not actually remove that information from a computer. Instead, the deleted information remains there, typically on the computer's disk drive, until it is overwritten by other information. That may not happen for years -- or ever. In the meantime, that information may be recovered using software tools designed for recovering deleted information, and may be subject to discovery in legal proceedings. Thus, common document retention policies for e-mail and electronic documents are not completely effective or reliable.
... DISCOVERY OF DELETED FILES
Damaging evidence has been found in deleted electronic documents and files in numerous cases. For example, in Plasse v. Tyco Elecs. Corp., forensic analysis revealed that the plaintiff had deleted numerous files that were potentially relevant to the lawsuit and had also backdated documents, leading the court to dismiss the plaintiff's case in its entirety. See Plasse v. Tyco Elecs. Corp., 448 F. Supp. 2d 302, 308-11 (D. Mass. 2006)
Success breeds success? Only one camera in four useful? See the next article!
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/0242224&from=rss
Cameras Help Cops Catch a Killer
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday January 03, @07:08AM from the panopticon dept. Privacy
CrazedWalrus writes "Philadelphia police recently captured a serial killer with the help of a combination of Homeland Security and private surveillance cameras. Police examined video from 50 different cameras and pieced together relevant footage from 12 of them, and eventually were able to identify the murderer. Once caught, he confessed to several other murders spanning the past eight years. Without these cameras this killer would probably be stalking the streets of Philadelphia today. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?"
If you don't understand the technology, at least ask someone who does before making assertions to the judge... So, if you can't tell real from Memorex, can you trust any image?
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6145563.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news
Police blotter: Detecting computer-generated porn?
By Declan McCullagh Story last modified Wed Jan 03 06:26:29 PST 2007
"Police blotter" is a weekly News.com report on the intersection of technology and the law.
What: FBI claims that one of its analysts can simply look at a photo and detect whether it's been altered in Photoshop or generated by a computer.
When: U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Massachusetts ruled on August 11 and November 22, 2006.
Outcome: FBI's claim was rejected and its expert was not permitted to testify.
What happened, according to court documents:
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law banning the possession of images of minors in lascivious poses that were either Photoshop-altered adults or completely computer-generated. Since then, to secure a conviction, prosecutors must prove that a defendant possessed images of real--not virtual--children.
This brings us to the case of Rudy Frabizio, whose employer discovered sexually explicit images on Frabizio's computer that appeared to involve minors. The FBI was contacted, and Frabizio was indicted on one count of possession of child pornography.
Initially, the FBI chose as its expert witness Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College professor of computer science, who had written a program to determine whether an image was real. But then Frabizio's defense attorney discovered that the program had a 30 percent false-positive error rate: it frequently classified a real photograph as computer-generated. It also classified an image of a cartoon dragon called "Zembad" as real.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which shares responsibility with the FBI for prosecuting child pornography, has paid for Farid's research on image detection. A DHS-funded technical report that Farid published after the Supreme Court's ruling claims his statistical technique "correctly correctly classified 67 percent of the photographic images."
After that revelation, the FBI quickly switched witnesses. Its new expert was Thomas Musheno of the FBI's Forensic Audio, Video, and Image Analysis Unit.
The FBI claimed that Musheno could simply look at each image--with no computer program required--and figure out which is legal and which is not. Musheno concluded that 6 of the 19 JPEG images definitely depict real children and 10 others "appear to be" real children. (Musheno holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in photography, not in any technical disciplines, and the FBI handbook (PDF) does not discuss how to detect computer-altered images.)
In response, Frabizio's defense counsel essentially argued that the line between real and virtual had disappeared. As evidence, the defense cited a computer-generated image of a woman in a fetal position, a "photo" of actress Jennifer Garner, and an image of a woman kneeling on a bed.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Massachusetts wrote two opinions, the first on August 11 and the second on November 22. (A preliminary ruling is here).
Gertner seemed to take a dim view of the FBI's witness-switching and its claim that one of its analysts could simply look at a sexually explicit image and say confidently that it was of someone who's 17 years old and a minor--or 18 years old and an adult.
"I have serious doubts as to whether a person visually studying the images in this case can distinguish real pictures from manipulated or wholly virtual ones with the level of confidence required in a criminal prosecution," Gertner wrote. She cited computer science research that said even "experts cannot know whether a digital image is real or virtual."
Gertner ruled in August that the government was welcome to find an expert on computer-based graphical manipulation--but because Musheno was not one, he would not be allowed to testify. In November, she rejected the government's request to reconsider, which had argued that other federal circuits permitted such testimony from nonexperts.
Excerpts from Judge Gertner's August opinion:
I find that visual observation alone is inadequate to the task of evaluating the images in this case. If photographic experts as a general matter are inadequate to the task of identifying computer-generated images, then no level of experience in that field will suffice to qualify one as an expert. Indeed, allowing Musheno to testify would be like allowing a dentist to identify the causes of glaucoma. If the government offered an expert who eliminated the possibility of such imagery in this case, then Musheno's testimony might be admissible.
In a world of rapidly changing technology, where the availability and use of Photoshop and other, similar programs is widespread, substantial evidence suggests it may be possible to digitally create or manipulate photographs in a manner the naked eye cannot detect. The government has not shown otherwise. Under these circumstances, it is unreasonable to expect a lay jury to differentiate the real from the computer-generated. The government must therefore present an expert or other extrinsic evidence to prove that the images in question depict real children.
Whether the images in this case are real or virtual cannot be determined based on mere observation, however, even by a photographic expert. More specialized, computer-based knowledge is required to exclude the possibility that the pictures are wholly virtual. Furthermore, even if visual observation were sufficient, I would find that Musheno's qualifications and expertise do not justify the conclusions he proposes to make. I would allow him to testify to his observations, but not to his ultimate conclusions.
Excerpts from Judge Gertner's November opinion:
The government suggests that the Supreme Court has already resolved the issue in the case at bar. It did not. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the Court was addressing a hypothetical question and one from 2002 to boot. The Supreme Court did no more than assume that if the government's position were true, that virtual images are indistinguishable from real ones, that would be irrelevant to a constitutional analysis. The fact that it would be difficult to tell the real images--which are not protected--from the virtual images--which are protected--is not a basis for suppressing lawful speech, i.e. the virtual images.
The argument, in essence, is that protected speech may be banned as a means to ban unprotected speech. This analysis turns the First Amendment upside down. The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech. Protected speech does not become unprotected merely because it resembles the latter. The Constitution requires the reverse. The possible harm to society in permitting some unprotected speech to go unpunished is outweighed by the possibility that protected speech of others may be muted.
I suppose if you have teenagers, you could dial this down to .00001 (or driving gloves will come back into fashion...)
Jan 3, 7:13 AM EST
Toyota Creating Alcohol Detection System
TOKYO (AP) -- Toyota Motor Corp. is developing a fail-safe system for cars that detects drunken drivers and automatically shuts the vehicle down if sensors pick up signs of excessive alcohol consumption, a news report said Wednesday.
Cars fitted with the detection system will not start if sweat sensors in the driving wheel detect high levels of alcohol in the driver's bloodstream, according to a report carried by the mass-circulation daily, Asahi Shimbun.
So sic the forensic accountants on them!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070103/003127.shtml
RIAA Pulling Out All The Stops To Keep Its Wholesale Digital Download Prices Quiet
from the can't-let-that-get-out-now,-can-we? dept
For all the talk about how iTunes is something of a loss leader for Apple, it's still never been clearly stated just how much the recording industry charges Apple for each downloaded song. Everyone seems to agree that it's approximately two-thirds of the retail $0.99 price, and at various times we've heard numbers as low as $0.65 and as high as $0.77. The general consensus is that it's usually in the $0.67 to $0.70 range, with $0.70 being the standard these days. However, it appears that the RIAA really just doesn't want anyone to know about them. In one of the recent lawsuits, UMG v. Lindor, where the defendant is challenging the damages amount, the RIAA is refusing to disclose the wholesale pricing details unless they can require Lindor's attorneys from keeping the prices confidential. Her attorneys refuse to do so, on the grounds that the information really isn't confidential, and the only reason the RIAA is hoping to keep the prices quiet is to assist them in other lawsuits. Perhaps that would be lawsuits like the one they're facing from a bunch of musicians who feel that the labels are cheating them out of revenues owed from digital downloads.
Forward to your security guru (that's Hindi for “Geek”) At minimum, this type of article should document what you can learn from your wireless network.
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1884?ref=rss
Wireless Forensics: Part One - Tapping the Air
Raul Siles, GSE 2007-01-02
Introduction
The huge adoption of wireless technologies over recent years has placed wireless data (or Wi-Fi) networks, based on the 802.11 specifications, as one of the major attack vectors for organizations nowadays. Incident handlers and law enforcement have been forced to deal with the complexity associated with these technologies when managing and responding to security incidents.
This two-part series looks at the issues associated with collecting and analyzing network traffic from wireless networks in an accurate and comprehensive way; a discipline known as wireless forensics.
It's interesting, but is there value in this type of analysis? (You can't know until you do it...)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/02/1711230&from=rss
A Microsoft-Speak Timeline - From Altair to Zune
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 02, @12:44PM from the always-he-is-looking-to-the-future-to-the-horizon dept. Microsoft Technology
netbuzz writes "No company has had more to say about software over the past 30 years than Microsoft (for better or worse). How they've said it — the actual language used — reveals a lot about the company's evolution and is the focus of a new timeline. There's a look back at a 'tag cloud' provided by the Seattle P-I. In addition to analyzing the linguistics of about 90 documents, there are also links to such gems as Bill Gates' Playboy interview and his famous 'Open Letters to Hobbyists.' From the article: 'We're talking all the way from Altair to Zune, with stops along the way for every technology the company developed, bought or borrowed, right on through to current entanglements with Vista, Linux and Google. The tool allows for an at-a-glance view of company priorities as they evolve and shift.'"
