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Encryption

In UK, Two Convicted of Refusing To Decrypt Data 554

Posted by kdawson from the no-pleading-the-fifth dept.
ACKyushu clues us to recent news out of the UK, where two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys, resulting in landmark convictions that may have carried jail sentences of up to five years. There is uncertainty in that the names of the people convicted were not released; and without those names, the Crown Prosecution Service said it was unable to track down details of the cases. "Failure to comply with a section 49 notice carries a sentence of up to two years jail plus fines. Failure to comply during a national security investigation carries up to five years jail. ... Of the 15 individuals served, 11 did not comply with the notices. Of the 11, seven were charged and two convicted. Sir Christopher [Rose, the government's Chief Surveillance Commissioner] did not report whether prosecutions failed or are pending against the five charged but not convicted in the period covered by his report."
Books

Submission + - Scribd Becomes DRM-Optional E-Bookstore

Submitted by
Miracle Jones
Miracle Jones writes: "In an effort to compete with Amazon and Google, the document-hosting website Scribd will now be letting writers and publishers sell documents that they upload. They will be offering an 80/20 profit-sharing deal in favor of writers, and will let writers charge whatever they want. Additionally, Scribd will not force any content control (although they will have a piracy database and bounce copyrighted scans) and will let writers choose to encrypt their books with DRM or not. This is big news for people in publishing, who have been seeking an alternative to Amazon for fear that Amazon is amassing too much power too quickly in this brand new marketplace, especially after Amazon's announcement last week that they will now be publishing books in addition to selling them."
Windows

Submission + - Dell says Windows 7 pricing may be a 'problem'

Submitted by ausekilis
ausekilis writes: On Tom's Hardware is a brief article concerning the price for the upcoming Windows 7

The director of product management for Dell's business client product group, Darrel Ward, thinks that the price for the upcoming Windows 7 operating system may potentially be an obstacle for early adopters.

Considering Dell sells Ubuntu-equipped Inspiron 15n for ~$350, and Vista Equipped Inspiron 15 for ~$399, and "If there's one thing that may influence adoption, make things slower or cause customers to pause, it's that generally the ASPs (average selling price) of the operating systems are higher than they were for Vista and XP", it makes you wonder exactly what they hidden "Windows 7 fee" will be on machines later.

Let the flames begin.

Transportation

Submission + - US to Require New Cars Get 42 mpg 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "New cars and trucks will have to get 30 percent better mileage starting in 2016 under an Obama administration move to curb emissions tied to smog and global warming. While the 30 percent increase would be an average for both cars and light trucks, the percentage increase in cars would be much greater rising from the current 27.5 mpg standard to 42 mpg. Environmentalists praised the move. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, called it "one of the most significant efforts undertaken by any president, ever, to end our addiction to oil and seriously slash our global warming emissions." Obama's plan also would effectively end litigation between states and automakers who had opposed state-specific rules, arguing that having to meet several state standards would be much more expensive for them than just one federal rule. The Detroit News reported that automakers were on board with the new rule and had worked with the administration on creating a timeline for the transition. Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, described the new rule as "a triple play: It will help move America off foreign oil, save families money and spur American businesses to take the lead in developing the job-creating, clean-energy technologies of the future.""
Security

Submission + - Are Your "Secret Questions" Too Easily Ans (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by wjousts
wjousts writes: We've all seen the "secret" questions that are used to reset your password on various sites and several high-profile break-ins have resulted from hackers guessing the answers to secret question. This week, research from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University, presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy will show how woefully insecure these functions are.

As reported in Technology Review:



In a study involving 130 people, the researchers found that 28 percent of the people who knew and were trusted by the study's participants could guess the correct answers to the participant's secret questions. Even people not trusted by the participant still had a 17 percent chance of guessing the correct answer to a secret question.

The least-secure questions are simple ones whose answers can be guessed with no existing knowledge of the subject, the researchers say. For example, the answers to the questions "What is your favorite town?" and "What is your favorite sports team?" were relatively easy for participants to guess. All told, 30 percent and 57 percent of the correct answers, respectively, appeared in the top-five list of guesses.
Government

Submission + - Database of all UK children launched (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "A controversial database which holds the details of every child in England has now become available for childcare professionals to access. The government says it will enable more co-ordinated services for children and ensure none slips through the net. 390,000 people will have access to the database, but will have gone through stringent security training."
Medicine

Submission + - fMRI Shows Man Loves Wife More Than Angelina Jolie (esquire.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've discussed (at length) functional MRI technology as it pertains to marketing and virtual reality, but now Esquire writer A.J. Jacobs has become the first person to go inside the controversial machine to test the science behind his sex drive. As in, he has fMRI experts read his mind as to whether he's actually more turned on by his young wife or Angelina Jolie. The results, unsurprisingly, are both geeky and hilarious. Would you subject yourself to this kind of reality check?
The Courts

Submission + - Court Sets Rules for RIAA Hard Drive Inspection (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In a Boston RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court has issued a detailed protective order establishing strict protocols for the RIAA's requested inspection of the defendant's hard drive, in order to protect the defendant's privacy. The order (PDF) provides that the hard drive will be turned over to a computer forensics expert of the RIAA's choosing, for mirror imaging, but that only the forensics expert — and not the the plaintiffs or their attorneys — will be able to examine the mirror image. The forensics expert will then issue a report which will describe (a) any music files found on the drive, (b) any file-sharing information associated with each file, and any other records of file-sharing activity, and (c) any evidence that the hard-drive has been 'wiped' or erased since the initiation of the litigation. The expert will be precluded from examining 'any non-relevant files or data, including ...emails, word-processing documents, PDF documents, spreadsheet documents, image files, video files, or stored web-pages.'"
United States

Submission + - SPAM: Do we really need a National Climate Service?

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "I suppose its natural for Washington to try and wrap issues up in a tidy legislative package for bureaucratic purposes (or perhaps other things more nefarious). But one has to wonder if we really need another government-lead group, especially when it comes to the climate and all the sometimes controversial information that entails. But that's what's under way. Today the House Science and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on the need for a National Climate Service that could meet the increased demand for climate information, the committee said. The NCS would provide a single point of contact of information climate forecasts and support for planning and management decisions by federal agencies; state, local, and tribal governments; and the private sector. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Spambot (Score 1) 134

It doesn't matter if they know for certain where the traffic originated from. The point is, you wouldn't wander up to a completely unknown stranger and whisper your personal secrets so they could tell them to another stranger and so on, so why have your computer do that same thing? Even if they don't know the origin, the metadata in your traffic will betray your privacy at some point. How can you trust someone you don't know?

That's how that guy in Europe got into hot legal water when he demonstrated the emperor hath no TOR clothes with his accumulation of sensitive information belonging to political officials, ripe for the picking at a TOR exit node.

Comment Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score 2, Insightful) 366

by A non-mouse Coward (#26832511) Attached to: Cambridge, Mass. Moves To Nix Security Cameras

>>>started up a national health service, and began a process of ensuring personal freedoms

Forcing your neighbors to pay YOUR health bills is not freedom. It's graft. It's no different than if I bought a Lexus, and then demanded everybody contribute $1 to pay my bill & extracted the money from their wallets.

If he said "house" instead of "lexus" would it have NOT been a troll? I get that some people may not like comparing health care to luxury cars, but replace "health care" with any "need" (food, water, clothing, shelter, and ... love ...) and the parent's point is pretty valid.

I still want to understand, since the Federal Reserve will be printing money for these bailouts and stimuli, why can't they just print money to pay off these debts in the first place?

--
libertarian: socially liberal (you can do whatever you want), financially conservative (as long as I don't have to pay for it); people can help people directly (private charities work better than government regulated bureaucracies); and people can mostly govern themselves, thanks! (Politicians, stay out of our lives!)

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