Last month, a declassified FBI report revealed that the bureau had used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to conduct multiple unlawful searches of a sitting Congress member's personal communications.

From a report by Ars Technica: Wired was the first to report the abuse, but for weeks, no one knew exactly which lawmaker was targeted by the FBI. That changed this week when Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) revealed during an annual House Intelligence Committee hearing on world threats that the FBI's abuse of 702 was "in fact" aimed at him. "This careless abuse by the FBI is unfortunate," LaHood said at the hearing, suggesting that the searches of his name not only "degrades trust in FISA" but was a "threat to separation of powers" in the United States. Calling the FBI's past abuses of Section 702 "egregious," the congressman -- who is leading the House Intelligence Committee's working group pushing to reauthorize Section 702 amid a steeply divided Congress -- said that "ironically," being targeted by the FBI gives him a "unique perspective" on "what's wrong with the FBI."

LaHood has said that having his own Fourth Amendment rights violated in ways others consider "frightening" positions him well to oversee the working group charged with implementing bipartisan reforms and safeguards that would prevent any such abuses in the future. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said that LaHood "personifies the fears and mistrust many in America have about the FBI's leadership," noting that "too many Americans are worried it could be them" next. FBI director Christopher Wray said that he "completely" understood LaHood's concerns, while emphasizing that the FBI has already implemented reforms and safeguards to prevent similar abuses in the future. An FBI spokesperson told Ars that "extensive changes" to address 702 compliance issues include "a whole new Office of Internal Audit currently focused on FISA compliance" and new policies requiring "enhanced pre-approval requirements before certain 'sensitive' US person queries can be run." The spokesperson provided an example, saying that for any sensitive queries involving elected officials, the FBI's deputy director must sign off. Wray said at the hearing that queries of the Section 702 database on US persons have dropped by 93 percent since last year. He also confirmed that the FBI launched "all sorts of mandatory enhanced training" initiatives on 702 compliance.
UPDATE: "At the same time, [LaHood] made clear that he still believes that Congress must reauthorize Section 702," reports the New York Times, "which he praised as a vital tool for combating a broad range of foreign threats."

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX, the crypto trading platform of which he was the CEO and co-founder. Investigations as to other securities law violations and into other entities and persons relating to the alleged misconduct are ongoing. From a statement: According to the SEC's complaint, since at least May 2019, FTX, based in The Bahamas, raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, including approximately $1.1 billion from approximately 90 U.S.-based investors. In his representations to investors, Bankman-Fried promoted FTX as a safe, responsible crypto asset trading platform, specifically touting FTX's sophisticated, automated risk measures to protect customer assets.

The complaint alleges that, in reality, Bankman-Fried orchestrated a years-long fraud to conceal from FTX's investors (1) the undisclosed diversion of FTX customers' funds to Alameda Research, his privately-held crypto hedge fund; (2) the undisclosed special treatment afforded to Alameda on the FTX platform, including providing Alameda with a virtually unlimited "line of credit" funded by the platform's customers and exempting Alameda from certain key FTX risk mitigation measures; and (3) undisclosed risk stemming from FTX's exposure to Alameda's significant holdings of overvalued, illiquid assets such as FTX-affiliated tokens. The complaint further alleges that Bankman-Fried used commingled FTX customers' funds at Alameda to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.

"We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. "The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws. Compliance protects both those who invest on and those who invest in crypto platforms with time-tested safeguards, such as properly protecting customer funds and separating conflicting lines of business. It also shines a light into trading platform conduct for both investors through disclosure and regulators through examination authority. To those platforms that don't comply with our securities laws, the SEC's Enforcement Division is ready to take action."

In 2004 NBC's news show "Dateline" began airing "To Catch a Predator" segments, in which a vigilante group posed online as minors to lure sex predators into in-person meetings — where they were then arrested by police.

The New Yorker looks at its cultural impact: Although there were only twenty episodes of the series, in three years, it's "this touchstone that I grew up with and that millions of people grew up with," Paul Renfro, a professor of history at Florida State University and the author of "Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State," said. "It shaped how people think about sexual violence in ways that we haven't fully grappled with." The show focussed on the threat from strangers on the Internet, even though most victims of child sexual abuse are harmed by someone known to them. "On the show, it's not the family, it's not priests or rabbis or other authority figures who pose a threat to children, it's this devious stranger," Renfro said. The show's influence helped spur the passage of the Adam Walsh Act, in 2006, which created publicly searchable databases of people convicted of certain sex crimes. (There's little evidence that sex-offender registries have been effective at reducing sexual offenses.)
But today, "amateur predator hunting has come back into style," the article notes, citing the proliferation of online groups. "Recently, the Washington Post found more than a hundred and sixty, which have been responsible for nearly a thousand stings this year."

And then the New Yorker interviewed a woman named Cam, who with her husband and her brother-in-law decided to form "the Permian Basin Predator Patrol" — broadcasting their sting operations and humiliations of potential perpetrators on YouTube: [S]oon after the channel started drawing attention, they were called to a meeting at the Odessa Police Department. According to Cam, officers made it clear that they disapproved of their activities. "We were told we can't be involved with them, and that we can't send them anything directly," she said. "One, we're endangering ourselves, and, two, we're giving them more work — that's what it seemed like they were saying."

"We are very mindful of not trying to entrap a suspect," Lieutenant Brad Cline, who works in the Odessa Police Department's Crimes Against Persons Unit, said. "Taking a predator into custody can be very dangerous as well."
The article points out that "To Catch a Predator" was cancelled when Texas man Bill Conradt decided not to follow-up on his online messages — but "When a SWAT team burst into his house, trailed by a camera crew, Conradt shot himself."

So what did Cam's group do when the Odessa Police Department declined their help? The Permian Basin Predator Patrol continued to make videos. If she couldn't contribute to an arrest, Cam thought, at least she could get the word out to the public. She became an expert at figuring out the identities of the men she was chatting with, even when they used fake names.... Sometimes she'd find a man's family on Facebook and send his mother screenshots of the obscene messages he'd sent, or call his employer. "I believe three of them have been let go from their jobs," she said.

A sting by the Predator Catchers Indianapolis led to a man's conviction for child solicitation.... Although YouTube's predator hunters tend to portray themselves as the unequivocal good guys (Cam is an exception — most are men), their track record is more mixed.... The Ohio-based group Dads Against Predators has reportedly been banned from local grocery stores for causing disturbances. In 2018, a twenty-year-old in Connecticut hanged himself after a confrontation with a predator-hunter group. One video by the Permian Basin Predator Patrol ends with a man weeping, then running into traffic. (Cam said that she asked police to perform a welfare check on him, but she's not sure if it occurred.)

Wikipedia points out that America's two largest-circulation publications are the two magazine sent out to over 38 million members of massive non-profit AARP (originally the American Association of Retired Persons).

It's now starting its own social network to compete with Facebook (which according to a recent survey is being used by over 72 million Americans over the age of 50), Ars Technica reports: The nonprofit funded the creation of Senior Planet Community, a social media network that encourages users to join pre-existing groups around shared interests, including gardening, travel, fitness, food, and technology. In that way, it feels more like a pared-down version of Reddit or a small collection of forums....

Besides its focus on the 50-plus set, Senior Planet Community stands apart from Facebook in that it's not commercial. The site has no advertising or membership fees. Unless the cost to run the site grows substantially, that probably won't present much of a problem. AARP isn't saying how much it has put into Senior Planet Community, but the organization is famously well-capitalized, with $2.3 billion in net assets and $1.7 billion in revenue in 2020.

At present, the site is bare-bones when compared with Facebook. There's no mobile app yet, though OATS [the affiliate organization that built the social network] says it hopes to develop one. The site is mobile-friendly at least, and all the requisite features are there, including groups, photo sharing, @-mentions, notifications, and direct messaging. As with all social networks, a looming question is how Senior Planet Community will handle moderation. The site has a relatively extensive list of "house rules" that encourages users to "be courteous" and "cite your sources." Posts about politics aren't forbidden, but the rules say posts can't stray off-topic, and users can't "attack individuals, social, ethnic, or political groups and figures." Users can report posts they think violate the rules. Currently, the user base is relatively small, so policing it should be straightforward.

"The moderating team keeps an eye on all comments, posts, and updates added to the platform from the backend.... " Suzanne Myklebust, OATS's director of communications, told Ars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: After three days of negotiations, House lawmakers have struck a deal on an amendment to protect innocent Americans from being spied on by their own government online. Discussions were carried out behind closed doors over Memorial Day weekend after news broke Friday that House leaders had agreed to allow a vote on an amendment introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Warren Davidson to prohibit the FBI from collecting Americans' web browsing history without a warrant.

The Lofgren-Davidson amendment will require the FBI to obtain a warrant even if there's only a possibility that the data it seeks is tied to a U.S. person. If the government wishes to access the IP addresses of everyone who has visited a particular website, it could not do so without a warrant unless it can "guarantee" that no U.S. persons will be identified. The House is preparing to vote as early as this week on the surveillance re-authorization bill, which will reinstate several key tools used by the FBI to conduct foreign intelligence investigations.

I loved this story. The Hustle remembers how in 1964 a world-renowned medical professor found a way to beat roulette wheels, kicking off a five-year winning streak in which he amassed $1,250,000 ($8,000,000 today). He noticed that at the end of each night, casinos would replace cards and dice with fresh sets -- but the expensive roulette wheels went untouched and often stayed in service for decades before being replaced. Like any other machine, these wheels acquired wear and tear. Jarecki began to suspect that tiny defects -- chips, dents, scratches, unlevel surfaces -- might cause certain wheels to land on certain numbers more frequently than randomocity prescribed. The doctor spent weekends commuting between the operating table and the roulette table, manually recording thousands upon thousands of spins, and analyzing the data for statistical abnormalities. "I [experimented] until I had a rough outline of a system based on the previous winning numbers," he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1969. "If numbers 1, 2, and 3 won the last 3 rounds, [I could determine] what was most likely to win the next 3...."

With his wife, Carol, he scouted dozens of wheels at casinos around Europe, from Monte Carlo (Monaco), to Divonne-les-Bains (France), to Baden-Baden (Germany). The pair recruited a team of 8 "clockers" who posted up at these venues, sometimes recording as many as 20,000 spins over a month-long period. Then, in 1964, he made his first strike. After establishing which wheels were biased, he secured a £25,000 loan from a Swiss financier and spent 6 months candidly exacting his strategy. By the end of the run, he'd netted £625,000 (roughly $6,700,000 today).

Jarecki's victories made headlines in newspapers all over the world, from Kansas to Australia. Everyone wanted his "secret" -- but he knew that if he wanted to replicate the feat, he'd have to conceal his true methodology. So, he concocted a "fanciful tale" for the press: He tallied roulette outcomes daily, then fed the information into an Atlas supercomputer, which told him which numbers to pick. At the time, wrote gambling historian, Russell Barnhart, in Beating the Wheel, "Computers were looked upon as creatures from outer space... Few persons, including casino managers, were vocationally qualified to distinguish myth from reality." Hiding behind this technological ruse, Jarecki continued to keep tabs on biased tables -- and prepare for his next big move...

In the decades following Jarecki's dominance, casinos invested heavily in monitoring their roulette tables for defects and building wheels less prone to bias. Today, most wheels have gone digital, run by algorithms programmed to favor the house.

Congress passed a bill yesterday that will make it illegal for people to use software bots to buy concert tickets. Ars Technica reports: The Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act makes it illegal to bypass any computer security system designed to limit ticket sales to concerts, Broadway musicals, and other public events with a capacity of more than 200 persons. Violations will be treated as "unfair or deceptive acts" and can be prosecuted by the Federal Trade Commission or the states. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent last week, and the House of Representatives voted yesterday to pass it as well. It now proceeds to President Barack Obama for his signature. Computer programs that automatically buy tickets have been a frustration for the concert industry and fans for a few years now. The issue had wide exposure after a 2013 New York Times story on the issue. Earlier this year, the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman completed an investigation into bots. The New York AG's ticket sales report (PDF) found that the tens of thousands of tickets snatched up by bots were marked up by an average of 49 percent.

The White House on Tuesday issued new instructions on how government agencies should respond to major cyber security attacks, in an attempt to combat perceptions that the Obama administration has been sluggish in addressing threats from sophisticated hacking adversaries, Reuters reports. The announcement comes amid reports that hackers working for Russia may have engineered the leak of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election. Motherboard adds: George W. Bush's Homeland Security Advisory System -- the color-coded terrorism "threat level" indicator that became a symbol of post-9/11 fear mongering -- is getting its spiritual successor for hacking: the "Cyber Incident Severity Schema." President Obama announced a new policy directive Tuesday that will codify how the federal government will respond to hacking incidents against both the government and private American companies. [...] The Cyber Incident Severity Schema ranges from white (an "unsubstantiated or inconsequential event") to black (a hack that "poses an imminent threat to the provision of wide-scale critical infrastructure services, national government stability, or to the lives of U.S. persons") , with green, yellow, orange, and red falling in between. Any hack or threat of a hack rated at orange or above is a "significant cyber incident" that will trigger what the Obama administration is calling a "coordinated" response from government agencies. As you might expect, there are many unanswered questions here, and the federal government has announced so many cyber programs in the last few years that it's hard to know which, if any of them, will actually make the US government or its companies any safer from hackers.

benrothke writes: The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting random typewriter keys for an infinite amount of time will eventually be able to create the complete works of Shakespeare. Various scientists such as Nobel laureate Arno Penzias have shown how the theorem is mathematically impossible. Using that metaphor, if you took every member of United States Congress and House of Representatives and wrote their collected wisdom on Iraq, it's unlikely they could equal the astuteness of even a single chapter of author Malcolm W. Nance in The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014. It's Nance's overwhelming real-world experiential knowledge of the subject, language, culture, tribal affiliations and more which make this the overwhelming definitive book on the subject. Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Bismillah (993337) writes A government inquiry has been launched into whether or not Australian authorities are using Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act inappropriately. Last year, the Australian securities watchdog used Section 313 powers to force ISPs to block a quarter of a million web sites — in order to prevent access to just 1,200 sites the authority deemed harmful. From the inquiry page: "How law enforcement agencies use section 313 to request the disruption of such services is an important public policy question. Section 313 is also used for other purposes, but the Committee will inquire solely into and report on government agency use of section 313 for the purpose of disrupting illegal online services. The Committee invites interested persons and organizations to make submissions addressing the terms of reference by Friday 22 August 2014."

A while ago you had a chance to ask John McAfee about his past, politics, and what he has planned for the future. As usual, John answered with extreme frankness, with some interesting advice for anyone stuck at a checkpoint in the third world. Below you can read all his answers to your questions.

An anonymous reader writes "The Greek government shut down broadcasting of all TV and radio channels operated by the state-owned broadcaster ERT at midnight local time, with police ejecting journalists and other employees occupying the building. The above link is a prominent Greek economics professor's (and Valve's in-house economist) analysis of the political motivations for the move."

wiredmikey writes "President Obama on Wednesday released a national strategy designed to balance the sharing of information with those who need it to keep the country safe, while protecting the same data from those who would use it to cause harm. 'The National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding' outlines how the government will attempt to responsibly share and protect data that enhances national security and protects the American people. The national strategy will define how the federal government and its assorted departments and agencies share their data. Agencies can also share services and work towards data and network interoperability to be more efficient, the President said. The President aimed to address concerns over Privacy by noting, 'This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be — and will be — protected.' The full document is available here in PDF format from the White House website."

Last week we solicited questions for US Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI), one of the chairs of the CSIS Cybersecurity Commission. Here are his answers — along with contact information for him if you want to continue the conversation.

Ars Technica reports that Comcast has been hit with three new class-action lawsuits due to the company's traffic-shaping practices. "The lawsuits ... ask that Comcast be barred from continuing to violate various state laws, in addition to unspecified damages." Meanwhile, members of the US House Telecommunications Subcommittee have asked Charter Communications' president to stop testing a program which uses Deep Packet Inspection to track the habits of its customers. A number of privacy groups have voiced their support (PDF). As if that weren't enough, it seems the City of Los Angeles is suing Time Warner for fraud and deceptive business practices. The Daily News notes, "... the City Attorney is seeking $2,500 in civil penalties for each violation of the Unfair Competition law as well as an additional $2,500 civil penalty for each violation described in the complaint perpetrated against one or more senior citizens or disabled persons."

There is nothing better than a Slashdot interview with someone who not only reads and understands Slashdot but can out-troll the trolls. Admittedly, the questions you asked Neal Stephenson were great in their own right, but his answers... Wow! let's just say that this guy shows how it's done.

Slashdot readers both contributed and helped moderate questions for the New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate. You can read the answers below, but if you'd like to see an expanded introduction, thumbnails of the candidates, and different formatting, go to the Youth Debate page. And that's not all: We're supposed to get candidates' rebuttals on or about October 17, so don't touch that dial!

Last monday, you were given the chance to Ask Questions of the Libertarian Party's US Presidential nominee, Michael Badnarik. Today we present to you 15 of the most highly rated comments, and the answers from the man himself. Thanks to Mr. Badnarik for taking the time to talk to us. His answers are yours with just a click of the mouse below...

We sent 10 of your questions to usability guy Joe Clark, and he took it upon himself to go a bit beyond simply answering them. In his reply he said, "Answers attached in a valid XHTML file. I would suggest at least retaining the id attributes. I copy-edited all the questions, but the words are all the same; they are now merely spelled and capitalized correctly. I think all the links work." Whatever. We left Joe's formatting intact. It's a little different from our usual style, but variety is the spice of Slashdot.

Your intrepid reporter took a jaunt down to the H2K2 conference this past weekend, held in the lovely Hotel Pennsylvania. The conference had much more floor space than they had two years ago, and it seemed like more attendance as well. Wireless networks were available, though overcrowded, and if you didn't encrypt your communications, well, you've probably already paid the price. My notes on the conference and the sessions I attended are below, followed by a couple of reader submissions.