When the only thing standing in the way of the passage of terrible laws is public outrage, the answer is simple: Keep pushing bad laws until the public gets tired of being outraged. They will use our own fatigue against us. Vis: Forget SOPA, You Should Be Worried About This Cybersecurity Bill | Techdirt.
Tag Archives: security
That’s A Good Deal!
“So, your ISP has give us all your private info, and has to track everywhere you go on the Internet, and you also have pay for all that, ‘kay?”
The S Stands For “Safety,” Right?
First, the TSA practically ignores the possible cancer risks associated with their X-ray scanners, deciding to deploy them anyway. Then they promised to conduct an independent study to determine their safety. Now they would like to hold off on that study, if you don’t mind. If you were riding in a car with the TSA at the wheel, and black smoke started pouring out of the engine compartment, the TSA would stomp on the accelerator and grit its teeth, saying “It’s fine. It’s fine,” over and over again. {Link via Slashdot}
Greatest Audience Position Receive
Tech-minded websites have been all over this XKCD comic about the relationship between password length and password strength, and now someone has come up with an XKCD-style long password generator (and guess where the title of this post came from). Which is very cool–and more than a little necessary. Because you just know that there are thousands of people who, after reading that strip, immediately changed all of their passwords to “purple monkey dishwasher.”
Firewall Next Time
Tycho, on the recent spate of high-profile hacks: “Like the electronic smash and grab at Sony, I think the endgame here is better security at the places we trust with our data.”
Oh, if only that were true. Large institutions hardly ever seem to learn from these sorts of things, no matter how much they might stand to lose by failing to respond appropriately.
In fact, large institutions only ever resort to a single tactic when it comes to coping with well-publicized security failures, and that is to wildly overreact.
Corporate institutions end up treating their customer-base as if they were criminals, providing new and exciting hoops to jump through in order to use their own purchased content. (Try playing a game on Steam with a sketchy internet connection sometime.)
Government institutions tend to decide that the right course of action is to surveil the hell out of everyone, while also beating themselves about the head until they manage to forget that the word “warrant” was once a part of the English language.
The eventual retaliation will simultaneously fail to even inconvenience the hackers, while we–consumers and citizens–will get to deal with the repercussions of our flailing institutions for the foreseeable future.
Mmm… I could be wrong, but we’ll see.
UPDATE: It begins…
Bug Guts
The folks at Wired’s Threat Level blog (via IFixIt) take apart an FBI vehicle tracking device and get a good look at its insides. It almost looks so innocent, when it’s in pieces like that.
Be seeing you.
Be Careful Out There
“Following the successful operation by U.S. forces to kill Osama bin Laden, Internet users are searching in the masses for any details about the incident they can find. Cybercriminals know this and have already been at work to ‘poison’ common search results hoping to gain access to people’s computers and infect them with malware.” {From: Security Week | Via: Slashdot}
Just a reminder that you can never go looking for information about anything without risking your safety ever again.
Oh Shit
“What makes the robot special is its ability to build a computer model of its surroundings, incorporating information on lines of sight. The robot is fitted with a laser scanner to allow it to covertly map its environment in 3D. It also has a set of acoustic sensors which it uses to distinguish nearby footsteps and their direction.” {From: Surveillance Robot That is Programmed To Hide – Slashdot}
You know, if this sort of thing keeps up, we can eliminate paranoia from our list of mental aberrations. Not by curing it, but by turning formerly irrational fears into completely plausible and appropriate concerns.
Too Much Baggage?
“According to a federal probe, at least 27 TSA agents in Honolulu took it easy on the job, routinely letting un-screened baggage through on early-morning flights.” {From: Feds Investigating TSA Agents For Allegedly Failing To Screen Luggage – The Consumerist}
So when it comes to the TSA’s baggage handling practices, it seems they have only two strategies. Either to ignore it completely, or to rifle through it looking for goodies.
UPDATE: 28 TSA screeners fired
The Illinois Secret Police
“Yesterday, we wrote about a woman who was facing 15 years in jail for using her cameraphone to videotape part of her effort to get Internal Affairs of the Chicago Police Department to investigate an officer, whom she claims sexually assaulted her. Apparently, this sort of situation is not unique in Illinois. Another story this week tells about an artist who set out to do a reasonable bit of civil disobedience: to protest a Chicago ordinance concerning where and when he could sell artwork on the street.” {From Artist Facing 15 Years In Jail For The Crime Of Videotaping His Own Arrest | Techdirt}
Visitors to the great state of Illinois are advised to leave any potential recording devices at home, especially if they plan on interacting at some point with the police. Remember: Law enforcement works best under total secrecy and non-accountability. It’s for your own good, as far as you know.
