Don’t go out with a pressure cooker

Posted on by at 11:50 am
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Apparently, the FBI has decided that they should interview people seen in public with a pressure cooker. At a minimum, they have decided that if you are a Saudi with a pressure cooker, you deserve an interrogation.

What brings the FBI and the Saudi rice dish Kabsa together? The answer is: a pressure cooker.

Talal Al-Rouqi, a Saudi student in Michigan, claims he was questioned by the FBI after neighbours reported seeing him walking with a pressure cooker similar to those used in the recent Boston bombing. Speaking last week to the Saudi Gazette, Al-Rouqi said he was transporting the cooker filled with rice and meat to a friend’s apartment for dinner. The next day, he was reportedly interrogated by FBI officials.

“When they found nothing unusual, they cautioned me not to venture out again with the pressure cooker,” Al-Roqui said.

Oh, there is also this:

In what can only be described as a posthumous victory for raging asshole Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Williams-Sonoma, the (absolutely amazing) kitchen-stuff company, has pulled pressure cookers–which the Tsarnaevs built into bombs–from shelves in Massachusetts.

This type of response is crazy.

More here.

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Is your smartphone secure?

Posted on by at 9:28 am
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Probably not, if you have an Android phone.

According to malware researchers at F-Secure Labs, the number of active mobile threat families and variants initially spiked in the winter quarter, with Android’s share jumping from 49 out of 74 known threats to 96 out of 100, with the balance being related to Nokia’s essentially mothballed Symbian platform.

That was enough to rouse a tweet from the rarely used account of Apple’s head of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller, who linked to the report with the brief admonition “be safe out there.”

However, F-Secure’s new report for the latest quarter shows Android now accounts for 136 out of 149 known threats, or 91.3 percent of all malware activity (up from 79 percent in 2012).

The other threats remained related to Symbian, with zero discovered for Blackberry, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile/Phone or Apple’s iOS. The research noted that mobile threats are overwhelmingly motivated by profits, with 76.5 percent designed specifically to con users out of money, rather than seeking to just cause damage.

(via Apple Insider)

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Privacy quote of the day

Posted on by at 7:36 am
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There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by The A.P. during a two-month period, provide a road map to A.P.’s news gathering operations, and disclose information about A.P.’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.

– Gary Pruitt, President and CEO of the Associated Press, outraged by the seizure by the Federal government of the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year. The ability and willingness of the government to seize data and records without notification must stop. Particularly, in the case of journalists, seizures adversely affect free speech and freedom of the press.

Dumb ass of the week

Posted on by at 11:58 am
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Stupid is as stupid does.

The theater manager at a Jefferson City, MO, theater decided it would be a good idea to arrange to have a man in full body armor with fake guns walk into a movie theater on the night of the release of the latest Iron Man movie. Needless to say, chaos reigned.

“We received a series of 911 calls stating that a man dressed in all black and body armor and a rifle was walking into Capital 8 Theaters,” said [Jefferson City Police] Capt. Doug Shoemaker.

Officers thought they were responding to an active shooter investigation.

“Everything was in place, it’s the opening night of a superhero movie, it’s somebody walking in all-dark clothes, everything pointed to bad things about to happen,” said Shoemaker. “There’s really no good that can come of this.”

Instead, it was all part of a publicity stunt for the movie opening. The man in tactical gear was an actor carrying a fake gun.

Capital 8 Theaters manager Bob Wilkins told ABC 17 News this was planned months in advance and only a few people were upset, but hundreds were entertained.

Secret laws continue to propagate in the US

Posted on by at 11:19 am
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Seal of the United States Department of Justice

Seal of the United States Department of Justice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Department of Justice is seeking to keep secret a memo written by the Office of Legal Counsel which claims that the FBI can request records from telecommunications companies without issuing national security letters or warrants in advance. In other words, the DOJ claims a right to side-step both the warrant and NSL process based on a memo which is not public. In effect, the DOJ is relying on secret law, which is among the techniques of repressive, totalitarian regimes. It is simply wrong to continue to create such secret laws in a democratic country supposedly governed by the rule of law.

They do this notwithstanding a redacted a DOJ Office of Inspector General report questioning the legality of such information requests. Check out page two of the text of the report. You can read chapter and verse of this action which is being challenged by the EFF.

In a brief filed on [in March] (PDF), EFF continued its fight against secret surveillance law, asking the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to order the release of a secret opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

The opinion was generated as part of a lengthy Inspector General investigation (PDF) into the FBI’s use of unconstitutional National Security Letters, so-called “exigent letters,” and other illegal methods of obtaining customer records. The OLC’s opinion provides the federal government with the authority to obtain private call-detail records in “certain circumstances,” without any legal process or a qualifying emergency, and despite federal laws to the contrary. So far, the DOJ has refused to disclose what those circumstances are, and has even refused to disclose the statute on which the government bases its purported authority.

EFF has long argued that, when the government interprets a law in a way that shapes or affects the rights of the public, the public is entitled to know what that interpretation is. Hiding the government’s interpretations of public laws – especially when those interpretations are unlikely to be tested in court – constitutes the perpetuation of “secret law.” But secret law has no place in a democracy; on Friday, we asked the D.C. Circuit to affirm that simple principle and to order the government to disclose the OLC’s legal interpretation.

The formal opinions of the OLC are among the the most obvious, and pernicious, examples of government secret law. OLC has the authority, delegated by the Attorney General, to issue legal opinions and interpretations that are binding on other Executive branch agencies. Over the past decade, OLC opinions have provided the legal authority for some of the federal government’s most controversial (and, ultimately, illegal) practices: torture, warrantless wiretapping, and – more recently – the targeted killing of American citizens have all found legal “justifications” in OLC opinions. The Executive branch has also shrouded these opinions in secrecy.

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How popular is Netflix?

Posted on by at 9:05 am
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On a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes. That’s more than YouTube, Hulu, Amazon.com, HBO Go, iTunes, and BitTorrent combined. Traffic to Netflix usually peaks at around 10 p.m. in each time zone, at which point a chart of Internet consumption looks like a python that swallowed a cow. By midnight Pacific time, streaming volume falls off dramatically.

– Ashlee Vance writing in BloombergBusinessweek.

Past time to amend the DMCA

Posted on by at 8:00 am
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English: BBC DRM protest imageThe Digital Millenium Copyright Act, enacted on October 12, 1998, made it a crime to bypass digital rights management (DRM) applied to copyrighted works, among other things. Thus, as an example, if you purchased a commercial DVD, it would be a crime to rip the disc as you can an audio CD. Recently, as a result of a decision by the Library of Congress, the DMCA made it illegal to unlock a cellphone to move it to another carrier, even after the full term of the contract with the original carrier expired. Ridiculous.

Many have argued that when a customer purchases a product the customer should be entitled to service it, copy it, and manage it, even if doing so would break DRM. And now, finally, this might well change:

New legislation sponsored by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) takes a broader approach to the issue. In addition to explicitly legalizing cell phone unlocking, the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 also modifies the DMCA to make clear that unlocking copy-protected content is only illegal if it’s done in order to “facilitate the infringement of a copyright.” If a circumvention technology is “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of facilitating noninfringing uses,” that would not be a violation of copyright.

For example, Lofgren’s bill would likely make it legal for consumers to rip DVDs for personal use in much the same way they’ve long ripped CDs. It would remove legal impediments to making versions of copyrighted works that are accessible to blind users. And it would ensure that car owners have the freedom to service their vehicles without running afoul of copyright law.

More info, and a way to take action, here.

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