From The Guardian:
A 17-year-old boy arrested as part of an investigation into Twitter messages sent to the diver Tom Daley after he and team-mate Pete Waterfield missed out on a medal on Monday has been issued with a harassment warning.
From: Threat Watch
The Department of Homeland Security has launched a research project to find ways to hack into gaming consoles to obtain sensitive information about gamers stored on the devices.
One of the first contracts for the project was awarded last week to Obscure Technologies, based in California, to devise a forensic tool that will siphon data from the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3 and other consoles.
From: CNET
The White House raised concerns yesterday about controversial antipiracy bills being debated in Congress and one way to measure how furious some copyright owners are with the President Obama is to read the Twitter posts of Rupert Murdoch.
EFF urged a federal court to block Microsoft Corporation’s attempt to misuse copyright law to thwart a competitor offering memory cards for the Xbox gaming system. Microsoft claims that Xbox users violate U.S. federal law — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — if they use third-party cards memory cards, such as those produced by Datel Holdings. If Microsoft were to prevail on this point, it could give the software giant the ability to use the DMCA to prevent competitors from selling Xbox-compatible accessories, like memory cards, controllers, and headsets. Such a ruling would have wide-ranging ramifications for hundreds of other consumer products.
Posted by Gary in Law, News, Opinion, Threat Watch on 16/Apr/2011 12:44
It’s not often that the ACLU and I are on the same side of an issue.
From: ACLU
A 6-year old getting patted down at the airport — leaving her confused and in tears because she thought she did something wrong — is an example of the out-of-control searches and security measures in our airports.
Aviation security requires striking a delicate balance between the personal safety of passengers and their right to privacy. Unfortunately, TSA has developed increasingly invasive methods of searching passengers that are encroaching upon their rights. The TSA has subjected passengers to “enhanced†pat-downs, which have resulted in reports of people feeling humiliated and traumatized, and, in some cases, reports comparing their psychological impact to sexual assaults.
Tell Congress to support the bipartisan Aircraft Passenger Whole-Body Imaging Limitations Act of 2011. Read more.
via WarriorTimes
From: Threat Level
A federal magistrate said Sony may subpoena the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, as the gamemaker ratchets up its civil lawsuit against the man who released the first full-fledged PS3 jailbreak in the console’s four-year history.
Tuesday’s order came two weeks after Magistrate Joseph Spero in San Francisco granted Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who had visited Hotz’s website from January of 2009 onward. Sony has also won subpoenas for data from YouTube and Google, as well as Twitter account data linked to Hotz, who goes by the handle GeoHot.
From: EFF
Last week’s post about the increasingly draconian and desperate measures the Tunisian government was taking to censor bloggers, journalists, and activists online was rapidly made irrelevant by subsequent events. Over the next few days, Tunisian dictator El Abidine Ben Ali promised not to run for re-election in 2014, then offered widespread reforms, including freedom of expression on the Internet, and finally stepped down from power and fled the country. The steps that EFF called on Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to take in order to protect the privacy and safety of their Tunisian users soon lost their urgency. For now, Tunisians are experiencing unprecedented freedom online after years of extensive government filtering and censorship of websites.
From: Nuance
Adding voice control to today’s most popular PC games brings the gaming experience to a new level of intensity. Just bark out intuitive commands like release target, lay down, get out, up the ante, fly backwards – and hundreds more! Used together with the included Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home software, the Dragon Gaming Speech Pack instantly executes your desired action with amazing recognition accuracy. Now you can focus more on the strategy for your favorite games like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. Chat more naturally with other game players and communicate more efficiently by voice – and do it all much faster than you can type.
From: Slashdot
“Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool has been convicted of ‘failing to disclose an encryption key,’ which is an offense under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and as a result has been jailed for 16 weeks. Police seized his computer but could not get past the 50-character encrypted password that he refused to give up.
“http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/10/05/2038219/British-Teen-Jailed-Over-Encryption-Password”
From: EFF
While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices. This patent application does nothing short of providing a roadmap for how Apple can — and presumably will — spy on its customers and control the way its customers use Apple products.
From: Danger Room
…a Hungarian company specializing in GPS tracking, has an app that functions as a makeshift version of Blue Force Tracker, the tech the U.S. military uses to map its friends and foes.
That basically turns your iPhone into Land Warrior, the digital mapping-and-communications ensemble that the Army has been trying to roll out to troops since the ’90s. Except Land Warrior weighs about 10 times as much and costs $48,000 per outfit.
Filipboard might be the killer app for the iPad. The integration with Facebook and Twitter is amazing.
http://www.flipboard.com/
From CNET via the Comms section of Warrior Times
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has decided to allow the government of Saudi Arabia access to BlackBerry users’ messages, in order to avoid a ban on the device in the country, the Associated Press reported Saturday.The AP quoted an official at the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission as saying that the deal between RIM and the government would likely involve placing a BlackBerry server inside the country to enable the Saudis to monitor data.
Finally.
From: Crunch Gear
Starbucks just tweeted that, starting July 1, there will be free, one-click WiFi at all Starbucks locations.
We’re very excited to announce that coming July 1st: Free. 1 click. No registration WIFI at all US locations! 🙂
This came from the official @starbucks Twitter account so either someone hacked them or this is the dog’s honest truth.
After fierce criticism, Facebook is announcing changes to the site’s privacy controls. Liveblog: http://on.wsj.com/aKtEdA
From: EFF
EFF UNVEILED RESULTS FROM THE “PANOPTICLICK” BROWSER PRIVACY PROJECT, which demonstrated that more than 8 in 10 people use browsers with unique, trackable signatures. Having a distinct browser signature means your individual movements on the web may be easier to track, and several companies are already selling products that claim to use browser fingerprinting to help websites identify users and their online activities.
For the full white paper “How Unique Is Your Web Browser?”:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf
For more about Panopticlick:
From:Â Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF IS DEMANDING BETTER PRIVACY PROTECTIONS FOR ENERGY CUSTOMERS RECEIVING “SMART METERS,” new devices that measure your home’s energy use in unprecedented detail. Energy usage data, measured moment by moment, allows the reconstruction of a household’s activities:
when people wake up, when they come home, when they go on vacation, and maybe even when they take a hot bath. Without strong protections, this information can and will be secured by civil litigants (like divorce lawyers or insurance companies), criminals, law enforcement, and more. The states and the federal government should ensure that energy customers get the protection they deserve at their homes — where privacy rights should be strongest.
From: Google Public Policy
The U.S. and other countries have been negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, known as ACTA, for the last two years. A number of consumer advocates and technology companies, including Google, have raised serious concerns about ACTA’s potential reach and the impact it could have on Internet users’ rights and innovation.
From: Michael Geist
Monday March 01, 2010
On the heels of the leak of various country positions on ACTA transparency, today an even bigger leak has hit the Internet. A new European Union document prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the U.S., the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA participants. The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty. This is probably the most significant leak to-date since it goes even beyond the transparency debate by including specific country positions and proposals.
The document highlights significant disagreement on a range of issues. For example, on the issue of anti-circumvention legislation and access controls, the U.S. wants it included per the DCMA, but many other countries, including the EU, Japan, and New Zealand do not, noting that the WIPO Internet treaties do not require it.
A brief summary of the key findings are posted below, but much more study is needed.
