http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7872
Pa. school district denies spying on students with MacBooks
February 19, 2010 by Dissent
A school district responds to a lawsuit alleging that students were spied on in their own homes by district-issued laptops by saying that the surveillance was a security feature.
Kreg Keizer reports:
A suburban Philadelphia school district yesterday denied it spied on students by remotely activating the cameras on their school-issued MacBook laptops.
In a statement released late Thursday, Christopher McGinley, the superintendent of Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa., admitted that the MacBooks’ cameras could be turned on without the user’s knowledge, but said that the functionality was part of a security feature.
“Laptops are a frequent target for theft in schools and off-school property,” said McGinley. “The security feature was installed to help locate a laptop in the event it was reported lost, missing or stolen so that the laptop could be returned to the student.” When switched on, the feature was limited to taking snapshots of whomever was using the notebook and capturing the computer’s current screen.
Read more on Computerworld.
[From the article:
McGinley confirmed that the district had disabled the camera activation feature Thursday, and would not switch it back on without the written consent of students and families.
The new economics? Increase profits by inventing new charges to impose on customers?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7869
‘Privacy Assist’ My Eye, Class Tells BofA
February 18, 2010 by Dissent
Maria Dinzeo reports:
Bank of America takes money from customers’ accounts to pay for services they didn’t order and don’t want, a class action claims in Federal Court. The class claims the bank charges for “Privacy Assist” services without informing them, and refuses to refund the money when customers catch on.
The class claims Bank of America has been withdrawing $8.99 from their accounts every month for “Privacy Assist,” which includes credit monitoring and free access to online credit reports.
Read more on Courthouse News. A copy of the complaint can be found here.
[From the article:
Privacy Assist Premier offers identity theft insurance for $12.99 a month, and Privacy Assist Complete includes anti-virus software for $18.99.
Silly me. I assumed that anything that law enforcement could access would automatically be available to the defense. (Eventually even federal wiretaps)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7867
Indicted Cop Challenges Facebook’s Privacy Rights
February 18, 2010 by Dissent
Joe Harris reports:
A judge is weighing whether Facebook’s right to privacy trumps a man’s rights to discovery for his defense in a criminal trial.
At issue is a motion from the attorney for former St. Louis City police Officer Bryan Pour, who authorities say used his department-issued pistol to shoot Jeffrey Bladdick in a bar parking lot. The motion seeks disclosure from Facebook of 23 individual user profiles and the actions of a Facebook group called “Jeff Bladdick is a bulletproof badass” going back to the day before the Nov. 9, 2008 incident.
Madison County Associate Judge James Hackett said he needed more time after hearing arguments from both sides Wednesday.
Pour’s attorney Albert Watkins said an anonymous tipster informed him of the group, which he believes included several officers involved in the investigation.
Watkins argued that his client’s constitutional rights fall within exceptions of the 2000 Electronic Communications Privacy Act and said that law enforcement regularly accesses the same records for its own investigations.
Pour faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
“If law enforcement is entitled to those records, it seems inherently flawed to not allow a criminally accused person who’s looking at 30 years in prison to the same information when it is clear that something was said,” Watkins said.
Read more on Courthouse News.
So, what does the government watch, and why?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7879
How closely does the government watch the files on your web site?
February 19, 2010 by Dissent
Does the government need any warrant or additional legal authority to view or collect information from publicly available web sites? A recent DHS memo received some guffaws on mail lists where people wondered why DHS would need to issue detailed privacy impact memos or justification that it was reading sites that are publicly available to everyone. And from a national security perpsective, don’t we want the government finding what is out there for everyone else to find?
John Young of Cryptome.org seems to think that the government does need some authorization to monitor publicly available web sites. Cryptome received an email from the Coast Guard about a file available on his site that indicated that as part of a “DHS wide pre-audit of public facing internet sites,” the Coast Guard was contacting “owners of CG web sites identified” that might contain inappropriate material. The email referred to a file on his site that was marked FOUO (For Official Use Only).
After confirming that the email was for real, Young replied, in part:
If you are legitimately and with authorization acting on behalf of the Coast Guard and DHS, you are overreaching governmental authority to monitor public web sites for “inappropriate material” unless you have a court order to do so or that the President has issued an executive order for such invasive action.
If you are doing this in secret or without appropriate authority, that is an even greater violation
Young has now filed a FOIA request to obtain more information about the Coast Guard conducting “pre-audit reviews.”
Any lawyers care to chime in on the situation? I don’t see anything particularly wrong with the government scanning publicly available web sites for files that they deem as important to national security, although I do appreciate John’s response about FOUO designation.
(Related) Not actually seizure, they just downloaded a copy of his child porn files.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/feds-can-search-seize-p2p-files-without-warrant/
Feds Can Search, Seize P2P Files Without Warrant
… The defendant, however, claimed he had a reasonable expectation of privacy because he thought he had turned off LimeWire’s share feature.
The new economics. “We love our customers, just not as much as we love money!” You never purchased your games, soon even the packaging will be worthless. Perhaps soon, you will only be able to play games in the cloud, where game manufacturers will have more control over their product.
Sony Joins the Offensive Against Pre-Owned Games
Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 19, @06:11AM
BanjoTed writes
"In a move to counter sales of pre-owned games, EA recently revealed DLC perks for those who buy new copies of Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, PlayStation platform holder Sony has jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans for the PSP's SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3. '[Players] will need to register their game online before they are able to access the multiplayer component of the title. UMD copies will use a redeemable code while the digital version will authenticate automatically in the background. Furthermore ... anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will be forced to cough up $20 to obtain a code to play online." [All used games just lost $20 of market value. Bob]
(Related) Can you say “Massive security threat?”
Valve's Battle Against Cheaters
Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 19, @03:13AM
wjousts writes
"IEEE Spectrum takes a look behind the scenes at Valve's on-going efforts to battle cheaters in online games: 'Cheating is a superserious threat,' says [Steam's lead engineer, John] Cook. 'Cheating is more of a serious threat than piracy.' The company combats this with its own Valve Anti-Cheat System, which a user consents to install in the Steam subscriber agreement. Cook says the software gets around anti-virus programs by handling all the operations that require administrator access to the user's machine. So, how important is preventing cheating? How much privacy are you willing to sacrifice in the interests of a level playing field? 'Valve also looks for changes within the player's computer processor's memory, which might indicate that cheat code is running.'"
Yet another Internet service? Massive data centers require massive amounts of power. If you play in that market, arbitrage and hedging come naturally. (and wholesale beats retail any day.)
Google Gets US Approval To Buy and Sell Energy
Posted by timothy on Friday February 19, @04:32AM
An anonymous reader writes
"The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday granted Google the authority to buy and sell energy on a wholesale basis. Google applied for the authorization last December through a wholly owned subsidiary called Google Energy. 'We made this filing so we can have more flexibility in procuring power for Google's own operations, including our data centers,' Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said via e-mail. But the authorization also raises the prospect that Google may start to buy and sell energy as a business."
Reader angry_tapir supplies a link to the approval document itself (PDF).
[Interesting reader comment:
Presumably Google have found a way to tag each electron with targeted advertising.
Plug your washing machine into a Google Energy supply and your shirts will come out of the machine covered in ad-words suggestions.
Tools & Techniques For Hacking and e-Discovery (is there a difference?)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=7876
Alternative routes to identifying “anonymous” online users
February 19, 2010 by Dissent
TJ McIntyre writes:
David Robinson and Harlan Yu have posted a superb series of posts on Freedom to Tinker (1,2,3) about tactics which might be used to identify anonymous internet posters, even in cases where IP addresses might not have been logged by the site which hosts the comment. The key insight is that sites typically embed multiple external services (such as advertising, stats counters and video hosting) which may either individually or in combination enable the identity of particular users to be pinned down…
Read more on IT Law in Ireland.
For da getting smarter bid'ness. (Perhaps I should convert my Blog into a scholarly journal?)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023548.html
February 18, 2010
Open Access Scholarly Journals Gather Support and Opposition
Chronicle of Higher Education: "This is a strong vehicle for academic freedom," says Mr. Willinsky, whose Public Knowledge Project offers free journal-publishing software to academics. In a world where subscriptions to some medical journals can cost more than $10,000 a year, and many colleges in developing countries cannot afford more than a handful of scholarly publications, publishing enabled by this kind of tool is plugging many academics into research and discourse as never before."
Tools & Techniques Assemble your own toolkit.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/combine-multiple-iso-images-burn-single-bootable-iso-image-file/
Combine Multiple ISO Images To Burn A Single Bootable ISO Image File
I love lists (that someone else took the time to assemble)
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/30_incredible_web_apps_you_need_try
30 Useful (and Unknown) Web Apps You Need to Bookmark
Posted 02/18/10 at 06:27:16 PM by Alex Castle
[Some I find interesting:
Rather than torture yourself trying to explain to a clueless relative how to perform a simple computer task, use ScreenToaster to capture a video of yourself doing it and automatically upload it to the web. You can also record an audio track for your tutorial. Best of all, you don’t have to install any software, and the whole
FillAnyPDF is a fairly simple web app which allows you to upload a PDF file, then easily write on it wherever you want. ... You can also share your blank form with others, so you can collect forms from a group easily. FillAnyPDF also supports electronic signatures and has a repository of free forms.
Vuvox is a rich media creation app that allows you to quickly turn your photos and audio into a moving web collage. A set of simple editing tools allow you to crop and rotate your pictures and when you’re done you can embed your collage into any webpage, or share links to a larger version on Vuvox’s website.
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