http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080914052135141
Bankers Take On Hackers
Sunday, September 14 2008 @ 05:21 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
... The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. listed 536 cases of computer intrusion in the second quarter of 2008, a 150 percent rise over the same period last year. The average loss per incident was $30,000.
Eighty percent of those attacks occurred on online banking Web sites.
Source - Hartford Business
You want us to protect you. Don't you? In order to do that, we sometimes need to ignore the constitution, evidence and even good manners. (Since we'll be chasing lots of shadows, we'll need more agents, too.)
If you're Irish, we can investigate you because you might participate in the St. Patrick's Day 'demonstration'
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/019309.html
September 13, 2008
ACLU Voices Concerns About New New FBI Guidelines To Prevent Terror
New York Times: "The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing. Justice Department officials said the plan, which is likely to be completed by the end of the month despite criticism from civil rights advocates, is intended to allow F.B.I. agents to be more aggressive and pre-emptive in assessing possible threats to national security."
ACLU: "Following a briefing today at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its deep concern over new guidelines that would govern FBI investigations. The new guidelines would lower standards for beginning "assessments" (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, and would replace existing guidelines for five types of existing guidelines: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations.
The rewritten guidelines have been drafted in a way to give the FBI the ability to begin surveillance without factual evidence, stating that a generalized "threat" is enough to use certain techniques. Also under the new guidelines, a person's race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy. The guidelines would also give the FBI the ability to use intrusive investigative techniques in advance of public demonstrations. These techniques would allow agents to conduct pre-textual (undercover) interviews, use informants and conduct physical surveillance in connection with First Amendment protected activities.
Remember the arguments used here. They will come in handy after the election to determine why Ron Paul won with 92% of the vote...
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/13/1839213&from=rss
Judge Rules Defense Can Get DUI Machine Source Code
Posted by kdawson on Saturday September 13, @03:14PM from the weird-or-inexplicable dept.
pfleming alerts us to developments in Arizona on a subject we have frequently discussed (e.g. FL, MN, NJ): efforts in DUI cases to obtain source code to devices that analyze blood alcohol levels. On Friday a Pima County Superior Court judge ruled that the software that powers the Intoxilyzer 8000 must be revealed to defense lawyers.
"Defense attorneys representing more than 20 people arrested on felony DUI charges agreed to consolidate their cases into one and to argue it before [Judge] Bernini... The source codes are crucial because the Intoxilyzer 8000 sometimes gives 'weird' or inexplicable results... [and therefore may be giving 'not-so-wierd' but incorrect results. Bob] Six other states have been battling CMI [maker of the Intoxilyzer] over the source code — Minnesota, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee and New Jersey... CMI has currently racked up over $1.2 million in fines in a civil contempt order for not disclosing the source code in Florida." [Suggesting their profits are significantly larger... Bob]
“Where there's a will, there's a hack” The strategy is to use DRM to force customers to purchase more copies. The response of customers is uniformly negative.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10041188-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Did 'Spore' copy protections backfire on EA?
Posted by Jennifer Guevin September 13, 2008 6:06 PM PDT
... After years of anticipation, the coming out party for Electronic Arts' new evolution game Spore seems to be getting rained out.
... By most accounts, Spore is a great game. But in the first week since its debut, many of the people perhaps most excited for its release have turned against it.
Enraged by what they call "draconian" copyright protections, thousands of people flooded Amazon.com to give the game a one-star rating. And now there seems to be another movement afoot, one that is far more likely to hit EA where it counts.
... On Saturday, TorrentFreak wrote that the game had already been downloaded more than 500,000 times on BitTorrent sites.
So will EA consider the DRM move a mistake? PR representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but that will likely depend on how well it sells. In its first week, it seemed to do pretty well--at least anecdotally, with stores around the country reporting they'd sold out of their stock. [Another strategic negative Bob]
Related DRM gone crazy? “How dare they buy a product and then use it in ways we didn't anticipate! We need to stop it or figure a way to be paid more...”
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/13/2114214&from=rss
Apple Declares DRM War On Sneaker Hackers
Posted by kdawson on Sunday September 14, @12:31AM from the your-clothing-can-tell dept. Patents Apple
theodp writes
"Nicholas Carr is not pleased that Apple has applied for a patent to extend DRM to tennis shoes and other articles of clothing. Apple apparently views tennis-shoe DRM as a way to head off a potential plague of sneaker hacking. 'Some people,' the patent application observes, 'have taken it upon themselves to remove the sensor from the special pocket of the [iPod-linked] Nike+ shoe and place it at inappropriate locations (shoelaces, for example) or place it on non-Nike+ model shoes.'"
[From the comments:
Here's one of the evil shoe hackers [podophile.com] Apple's trying to target.
What would you pay to avoid ads? Looks like India and China have another vein for 'gold mining'
Cellcom offers free mobile air time for watching ads
Sun Sep 14, 2008 6:36am EDT
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Mobile phone operator Cellcom on Sunday launched a new advertising model in Israel enabling subscribers to accumulate free air time in exchange for watching commercials.
Now here is a toy I could use!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8c52/
The ThinkGeek Annoy-a-tron
... With its thin design and embedded magnet for easy hiding, the Annoy-a-tron can be placed in a variety of locations. Select one of the three sound choices (2 kHz, 12 kHz, or alternating) and push the switch to the on position.
... The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying, hence the name) beep every few minutes. Your unsuspecting target will have a hard time 'timing' the location of the sound because the beeps will vary in intervals ranging from 2 to 8 minutes. The 2kHz sound is generically annoying enough, but if you really really want to aggravate somebody, select the 12 kHz sound.
No comments:
Post a Comment