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Submission + - More Than 1 In 4 Car Crashes Involve Cellphone Use (cbslocal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Texting and driving is dangerous but a new survey finds talking on a cellphone while behind the wheel may be even worse.

As WCBS 880s Paul Murnane reported from Stamford, the National Safety Council's annual report found 26 percent of all crashes are tied to phone use, but noted just 5 percent involved texting.

Safety advocates are lobbying now for a total ban on driver phone use, pointing to studies that headsets do not reduce drive distraction.

Submission + - New Scheme Makes it Impossible to Hack Individual Passwords (github.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering have devised a new scheme called PolyPassHash for storing password hash data so that passwords cannot be individually cracked by an attacker. Instead of a password hash being stored directly in the database, the information is used to encode a share in a Shamir Secret Store. Without recovering a threshold of shares, the attacker cannot crack passwords. The solution is fast, easy to implement (with C and Python implementations available), requires no changes to clients, and makes a huge difference in practice. For example, three random 6 character passwords that are stored using standard salted secure hash can be cracked by a laptop in an hour. With a PolyPassHash store, it would take every computer on the planet longer to crack these passwords than the universe is estimated to exist.

Submission + - Minnesota teen wins settlement after school takes Facebook password (startribune.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A Minnesota school district has agreed to pay $70,000 to settle a lawsuit that claimed school officials violated a student's constitutional rights by viewing her Facebook and email accounts without permission.

The lawsuit, filed in 2012 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, alleged that Riley Stratton, now 15, was given detention after posting disparaging comments about a teacher's aide on her Facebook page, even though she was at home and not using school computers.

After a parent complained about the Facebook chat, the school called her in and demanded her password. With a sheriff deputy looking on, she complied, and they browsed her Facebook page in front of her, according to the report.

"It was believed the parent had given permission to look at her cellphone," Minnewaska Superintendent Greg Schmidt said Tuesday. But Schmidt said the district did not have a signed consent from the parent. That is now a policy requirement, he said.

How is this not a violation of the CFAA?

Submission + - TSA missed Boston bomber because his name was misspelled in a database (nbcnews.com) 3

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the primary conspirator in the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people, slipped through airport security because his name was misspelled in a database, according to a new Congressional report.

The Russian intelligence agency warned US authorities twice that Tsarnaev was a radical Islamist and potentially dangerous. As a result, Tsarnaev was entered into two US government databases: the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment and the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), an interagency border inspection database.

A special note was added to TECS in October of 2011 requiring a mandatory search and detention of Tsarnaev if he left the country. "Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer," the note reportedly said. "Call is mandatory whether or not the officer believes there is an exact match."

"Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer."

Unfortunately, Tsarnaev's name was not an exact match: it was misspelled by one letter. Whoever entered it in the database spelled it as "Tsarnayev." When Tsarnaev flew to Russia in January of 2012 on his way to terrorist training, the system was alerted but the mandatory detention was not triggered. Because officers did not realize Tsarnaev was a high-priority target, he was allowed to travel without questioning.

Submission + - Obama administration is this generation's 'greatest enemy of press freedom' (poynter.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: New York Times reporter James Risen called the Obama administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation" on Friday, explaining that the White House seeks to control the flow of information and those who refuse to play along "will be punished."

Poynter reports that Risen made the remarks while speaking at Sources and Secrets conference a meeting of journalism , communication and government professionals held in New York City. The foreign policy reporter, who is currently fighting a fierce court battle with the federal government over his protection of a confidential source, warned that press freedom is under serious attack in today's America.

In a speech kicking off the conference, Risen claimed that the Obama administration wants to "narrow the field of national security reporting" and "create a path for accepted reporting." Those who stray from that path, he cautioned, "will be punished."

The result is a "de facto Official Secrets Act," Risen explained, making the current White House "the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation." And the media has been "too timid" in pushing back against the onslaught.

Some of that timidity was on display at the conference. Jeffrey Toobin, a writer for The New Yorker, denied that any constitutional protections for his profession even existed. “It won’t take me long to alienate everyone in the room,” he declared. “For better or worse, it has been clear there is no journalistic privilege under the First Amendment.”

Submission + - Homeland Security Exercise Targets "Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny" (infowars.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Leaked Homeland Security documents obtained by Infowars reveal details of a joint DHS/FEMA national exercise set to take place this week, one of the components of which revolves around an effort to counter online dissent by a group called “Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny,” which is disgruntled at the imposition of martial law after an earthquake in Alaska.

As we have exhaustively documented on numerous occasions, federal authorities and particularly the Department of Homeland Security have been involved in producing a deluge of literature which portrays liberty lovers and small government advocates as extremist radicals.

The document also mentions the threat posed by "disgruntled military and Department of Defense civilians," which ties into the talking point, repeatedly promoted by the DHS and other federal agencies, that returning veterans pose a major domestic terror threat.

The Capstone Exercise 2014 document makes it clear that a key part of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA's preparation for the aftermath of major catastrophic incidents in the United States is centered around combating online dissent which will be sparked as a result of federal authorities and military assets instituting martial law, or what the document refers to as "Defense Support to Civil Authorities".

This is particularly chilling given reports that emerged in 2006 concerning a nationwide FEMA program under which Pastors and other religious representatives were trained to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation.

Submission + - Navy database tracks civilians' parking tickets, fender-benders (washingtonexaminer.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A parking ticket, traffic citation or involvement in a minor fender-bender are enough to get a person's name and other personal information logged into a massive, obscure federal database run by the U.S. military.

The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LinX, has already amassed 506.3 million law enforcement records ranging from criminal histories and arrest reports to field information cards filled out by cops on the beat even when no crime has occurred.

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