52898433
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Every smartphone or other device with mobile communications capability (e.g. 3G or LTE) actually runs not one, but two operating systems. Aside from the operating system that we as end-users see (Android, iOS, PalmOS), it also runs a small operating system that manages everything related to radio. So, we have a complete operating system, running on an ARM processor, without any exploit mitigation (or only very little of it), which automatically trusts every instruction, piece of code, or data it receives from the base station you're connected to. What could possibly go wrong?
52862825
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Turns out the new kinect on the xbox one is so accurate that it can see your junk through your jeans.
52737753
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
The New York Times' editorial board has made a disappointing endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), even as the actual text of the agreement remains secret. That raises two distressing possibilities: either in an act of extraordinary subservience, the Times has endorsed an agreement that neither the public nor its editors have the ability to read. Or, in an act of extraordinary cowardice, it has obtained a copy of the secret text and hasn't yet fulfilled its duty to the public interest to publish it.
52221483
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Not one single person detained by the TSA has ever been convicted on terrorism charges. So, in what appears to be a twisted attempt to stay relevant, they are getting into the debt collection business. According to this article at the NY Times, if you are even "accused of violating security regulations" they will hand over your personal information to debt collection agencies.
51977737
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Commentators on the Lavabit case, including the judge himself, have criticized Lavabit for designing its system in a way that resisted court-ordered access to user data. They ask: If court orders are legitimate, why should we allow engineers to design services that protect users against court-ordered access?
The answer is simple but subtle: There are good reasons to protect against insider attacks, and a court order is an insider attack.
51760591
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Florida's hanging chads ain't going nothing on Azerbaijan. Fully a day before the polls were to open, election results were accidentally released via an official smartphone app, confirming what everybody already knew — the election was rigged from the beginning. The official story is that the app's developer had mistakenly sent out the 2008 election results as part of a test. But that's a bit flimsy, given that the released totals show the candidates from this week, not from 2008.
50150527
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Forget the NSA — the DEA has been working hand-in-hand with AT&T on the Hemisphere database of records of every call that passes through AT&T's phone switches going back as far as 1987. The government pays AT&T for contractors who site side-by-side with DEA agents and do phone records searches for them.
49863069
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
The latest twist in the NSA coverage sounds like something out of a dime-store romance novel — NSA agents eavesdropping on their current and former girlfriends. Official categories of spying have included SIGINT (signals intelligence) and HUMINT (human intelligence) and now the NSA has added a new category to the lexicon LOVEINT which is surely destined to be a popular hashtag now.
48903573
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
It's been just over a month since the NSA’s dragnet surveillance program was leaked to the public. Tomorrow, Congress is voting on an amendment that would block funding for NSA programs that collect the call records of innocent Americans.
A win tomorrow may start a chain reaction — but it won't happen unless we speak up. We have one day to convince Congress to act.
48178279
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
Last week Obama called Snowden a "hacker." Many articles were written speculating that Obama was trying trivialize Snowden because none of the NSA leaks required hacking — they were simply documents that he had access to.
Now it seems that Obama wasn't playing word games for political purposes — he may really have just let slip that Snowden's job was professional hacker for the NSA.
43138951
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
If you work in the USA, there is a good chance Equifax has been selling your salary information. As part of a credit reporting sevice that covers at least 30% of the working American public, employers have been handing over all of their payroll data to Equifax since at least 2009. Most companies have a policy against employees sharing salary info among themselves, but apparently it is just fine for them to give it to strangers looking for dirt on you.
22750684
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
A niece is having a child soon and asked me for name recommendations.
I suggested that she go with something ultra-generic so that it would be harder for people to pick the kid out of a database by name. But she can't just go with a "Jane" or "Mary" since the surname is ethnic enough that it would actually make the name stand out to combine it with such a generic white person's first name. So I would like to find out the most common first names for girls with her surname. The US Census provides name lists, but not full names, just last names and separately just first names. Is there anywhere else I can get frequency information on full names?
21212506
submission
Jah-Wren Ryel writes:
You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard. “We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,”
