Disinformation? Most tapes have the format printed on the label, don't they? Give a format, you can get a tape drive on e-Bay with little effort. (Of course, if you were targeting specific information, you'd have the tools already.)

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070926204319614

Opinion: Lost data tapes are non-events

Wednesday, September 26 2007 @ 08:43 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches

The recent theft of a tape containing bank-account and other sensitive financial data for all Connecticut state agencies made for great headlines but, all things considered, it was probably a non-event (see "Connecticut sues Accenture over stolen backup tape").

Much of the concern about lost, misplaced and stolen tapes stems from the fear that the data stored on these tapes is in an unencrypted format. While this concern is certainly justified if a laptop or USB drive should go missing, the risk of just anyone retrieving usable data from a tape is almost nonexistent for the following reasons:

• Numerous tape formats. 3592, 9840, 4mm, 8mm, LTO, SAIT and SDLT are just some of the available tape

Source - Computerworld

“Customers have 'no worries' because our data is password protected!”

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/26/1959246&from=rss

Convicted VoIP Hacker Robert Moore Speaks

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday September 26, @06:35PM from the kind-of-thing-an-idiot-would-have-on-his-luggage dept. Security News

An anonymous reader writes "Convicted hacker Robert Moore, who will report to federal prison this week, gives his version of 'How I Did It' to InformationWeek. Breaking into 15 telecom companies and hundreds of corporations was so easy because most routers are configured with default passwords. "It's so easy a caveman can do it," Moore said. He scanned more than 6 million computers just between June and October of 2005, running 6 million scans on AT&T's network alone. ' You would not believe the number of routers that had "admin" or "Cisco0" as passwords on them,' [These are the default (out of the box) passwords. The documentation always tells you to change them first thing... Bob] Moore said. 'We could get full access to a Cisco box with enabled access so you can do whatever you want to the box We also targeted Mera, a Web-based switch. It turns any computer basically into a switch so you could do the calls through it. We found the default password for it. We would take that and I'd write a scanner for Mera boxes and we'd run the password against it to try to log in, and basically we could get in almost every time. Then we'd have all sorts of information, basically the whole database, right at our fingertips.'"

Perhaps they should have pointed to the SPAM laws...

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9785927-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Verizon refuses to carry activist text messages

Posted by Amy Tiemann September 26, 2007 6:37 PM PDT

This news may hit CNET tomorrow as a New York Times cross-post, but I haven't seen anything about it yet so I wanted to be sure it was reported here.

According to the Times, Verizon, one of the nation's two largest wireless carriers, told NARAL that it would not allow the reproductive rights organization to send text messages through a program using Verizon's mobile network, on the grounds that Verizon has the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages.

I am no expert on Net Neutrality, but the idea that a telecom carrier will refuse to carry messages based on content is incredibly scary. Could they decide to broadcast messages sent by the Democratic party, but not Republicans? Christian messages but not Jewish? Everybody has a point of view that could be viewed as "controversial or unsavory" to someone else. I thought that controversy and open dialogue were integral parts of our democratic process. Idealism dies hard even in this day and age.

Apparently the First Amendment does not in itself prohibit such censorship, but we should not accept such an action, which has been likened to the mass censorship of political speech by the Chinese government, no matter whether the carrier agrees with the content or not.

Laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmission on phone lines do not apply to text messages. It's time to change that law to protect free speech, no matter how it is communicated.

The opposite of blocking? Perhaps NARAL should have used this technique?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20070925/003229.shtml

Comcast Fined For Airing Fake News Without Revealing It Was Fake

from the this-ain't-Jon-Stewart dept

Over the last few years there's been quite a bit of controversial over the practice of biased parties putting together video news releases. They look like typical local news feature segments on a particular topic, but they're actually put together by companies, PR agencies or even government agencies. Cheap or lazy TV stations will often air them as filler, though they rarely explain the origins of the report (and often will play them off as the work of their own news agency). The FCC has been warning stations about the practice of airing these videos without disclosure, but it hasn't had much of an impact. That may be changing. The FCC has now fined Comcast $4,000 for airing one such VNR, about some kind of sleeping pill without disclosing that the "news" report was produced by the company that made the sleeping pill. While it's nice that someone is cracking down on this deceptive practice, there are questions over jurisdiction. The FCC has jurisdiction over broadcast TV, but not necessarily cable TV. If anything, this seems like the sort of thing that the FTC should be looking into, rather than the FCC. Either way, the point should be clear: TV stations that are airing these videos may start to be a bit more careful (and a bit more open) about using them.

...or Verizon could have tipped these guys to the “Evil Messages” After all, we know exactly how terrorists write -- don't we?

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/do-you-write-li.html

Do You Write Like a Terrorist?

By Noah Shachtman EmailSeptember 24, 2007 | 12:00:00 PMCategories: Info War

You might think your anonymous online rants are oh-so-clever. But they'll give you away, too. A federally-funded artificial intelligence lab is figuring out how to track people over the Internet, based on how they write.

The University of Arizona's ultra-ambitious "Dark Web" project "aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web," the National Science Foundation notes. And that analysis, according to the Arizona Star, includes a program which "identif[ies] and track[s] individual authors by their writing styles."

What do they think they are, some kind of Democracy?

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/27/0334220&from=rss

New Zealand Police Act Wiki Lets You Write the Law

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday September 27, @02:20AM from the I-can-speed-every-tuesday dept. The Internet News

PhoenixOr writes "New Zealand is now on the top of my list for cool governments. They've opened a wiki allowing the populous to craft a new version of their Police Act, the legislative basis for policing in New Zealand."

What did they think they were, some kind of un-Democracy?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016100.html

September 26, 2007

Court Rules Unconstitutional Two Provisions of FISA

EFF: "Today, Judge Ann Aiken of the Oregon Federal District Court ruled that two provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), "50 U.S.C. §§ 1804 and 1823, as amended by the Patriot Act, are unconstitutional because they violate the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution."

“Reach out... Reach out and jail someone!” [PDF]

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/94-166.pdf

Extraterritorial Application of American Criminal Law

Now I can be the first one on my block to get the new “Obama Girl” video!

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016099.html

September 26, 2007

Google Video Alerts

Official Google Blog: "Video Alerts enables you to specify any topics or queries of interest so we can deliver interesting and relevant videos on a daily, weekly, or as-it-happens basis (your choice) to you via email. To start receiving Video Alerts, you can visit the Google Alerts homepage directly or set up the alert during your normal video searches. Videos may come from Google Video, YouTube, or many other video sources on the web."

How to target your hacker-bots?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016097.html

September 26, 2007

List of Federal Agency Internet Sites Partnership Renewed

"GPO is pleased to announce the renewal of its partnership with the Troy H. Middleton Library of Louisiana State University through 2010.

Originally signed in 2001, this partnership provides for Federal depository library access to the List of Federal Agency Internet Sites Web site. Based on the U.S. Government Manual, the List directs users to the Web sites of active Federal agencies, and can be searched in several ways. Users can view a hierarchical or an alphabetical list of all agencies. The agencies are also listed by broad category, such as boards/commissions, legislative, and quasi-official. The entire list is searchable by agency keyword as well."

Ain't technology wonder-ful? ...or is this another effect of “Global Warming?” (I'm selling “Save the hyphen” T-shirts. How many would you like?)

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSHAR15384620070921?sp=true

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on

Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:54pm EDT By Simon Rabinovitch

LONDON (Reuters) - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).