Microblogs
[The Register] Facebook IPO: Boom or bubble?: We look at the numbers - and what's missing... Is Facebook hugely overvalued or a solid business with some reliable growth ahead of it? A great deal of both.? [The Register] Obama washes hands of O?Dwyer piracy extradition case: Not my fault, blame the DOJ President Obama has said he has nothing to do with the decision by US authorities to extradite British student Richard O?Dwyer on copyright charges for linking to pirated content.? [Twitter / ID_AA_Carmack] ID_AA_Carmack: Compulsive caching or pre-calculation of answers when the questions aren?t performance intensive is a bad habit. matt [wronka.org]: ... and the Giants recover [matt [wronka.org]] matt [wronka.org] Cool URIs Don't Change: All of the Google Buzz RSS feeds are black. [The Register] Woz praises Android, blasts iPhone limitations: Apple co-founder speaks out Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has underlined his love for Android handsets, stating his gripes with the iPhone and why in many ways he prefers Google's OS.? Comments (1)[The Economist: The world this week] KAL's cartoon [matt [wronka.org]] matt [wronka.org] Useful for the numerous Internet, but non-Web-enabled, iPhone and Blackberry devices: "Omni Hotels is the first hotel company to offer both iPhone and Blackberry mobile applications. Our mobile apps on both platforms offer the full functionality of our HTML website" matt [wronka.org]: I can't quite recall the last time it actually started snowing for Christmas. [Schneier on Security] How to Open a Padlock with a Coke Can: A nice tutorial on making and using shims to open padlocks. Comments (1)[Schneier on Security] First-Person Account of a TSA Airport Screener: This is a few years old, but I seem not to have blogged it before. Comments (1)[The Register] Cnet slammed for wrapping Nmap downloads with cruddy toolbar: Babylon's Burning ... Cnet has come under fire for wrapping downloads of the popular Nmap network analysis tool and other open-source software packages with a toolbar of dubious utility.? [The Register] Codebreakers find evidence for hidden puzzle in GCHQ challenge: 'Tell me I'm on the right track, GCHQ, so I can get some sleep' Codebreakers are split over whether there might be a hidden challenge in the GCHQ-set code-breaking puzzle set last week.? [Twitter / ID_AA_Carmack] ID_AA_Carmack: @OhSillySillyMe Smartphone battery ~ 5 W-H, electricity ~$0.15 / kW-H, so 1333 complete drain/charge cycles = $1.00 [xkcd.com] Money: 
[Bohmian.org - Matthew Wronka] Pig latin: The second language 98% of all software supports. [The Register] Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos: Google no go-go Mr. Bezos,? Comments (1)[The Register] Attention swingbellies: Pizza sauce is a healthy vegetable: Does that mean garlic bread is a herb? The US government will officially declare pizza sauce a vegetable* in its own right, if Congress passes a rule change to recategorise the runny topping as a full-fledged vegetable this week.? [The Register] Open source team creates apocalypse survival kit: DIY handbook for 50 top civilization-saving tools A team of open source enthusiasts is putting together instructions for how to build 50 tools essential to establishing ? or reestablishing ? a civilization.? [The Register] Think your CV is crap? Your interview skills are worse: Really, why do you even bother... The applicant stared like a rabbit caught in headlights at the interviewer.? Comments (1)[Bohmian.org - Matthew Wronka] Why can't I shade my web browser: Because you're using Chromium, fool. matt [wronka.org]: @ Billerica, Town Of, UNITED STATES [kottke.org] Unicode character recognition: This is way more fun than I was expecting: you draw a shape and a recognition engine finds Unicode characters with shapes similar to what you drew. (via stellar) Comments (1)[The Register] World's only twin jet-engine bike drives onto eBay: Pulsejet-powered cycle under the hammer A motorbike powered by a pair of pulsejets popped up for auction on eBay this week.? [The Register] Apple patents a SIM you can't remove: Only Cupertino can piss off operators that much Apple has been awarded a US patent on an embedded SIM capable of switching between mobile network operators under command from Cupertino, assuming the operators comply.? [Schneier on Security] Commentary on Strong Passwords: It turns out that "2bon2btitq" is not a strong password. [The Register] Nokia loses sale lure as Maps and Music apps cracked: Yet another reason not to buy Finnish If Nokia is banking on its Music and Maps software will give it an edge over other Phone 7 handsets, it?s in trouble ? the copy protection behind the code has been cracked.? Comments (1)[The Register] Nazi <i>Star Trek</i> episode finally broadcast in Germany: ST:SS aired after watershed German television has finally aired an episode of Star Trek, which was previously held from broadcast due to a Nazi theme that ran throughout.? Comments (1)[Twitter / jayayres] jayayres: http://t.co/AVBWfMGu Comments (1)[The Register] NASA funds laser tractor beam research: Shifting particles, not the Enterprise, using SciFi staple NASA has awarded a $100,000 grant to three boffins who are investigating a tractor beam trifecta.? Comments (1)[Bohmian.org - Matthew Wronka] Center around: Anything that centers around something lacks precision. I suppose if you're dealing with a quantum cloud, or proportionally disjointed and poorly thought-out thesis, this phrase might be an apt description. [Bohmian.org - Matthew Wronka] You should never restart your computer except as a last resort: Rebooting a computer to fix a problem without understanding what is going on will just allow the program to manifest itself. Fix the problem. If a computer needs to reboot in order to work, something is wrong. matt [wronka.org]: Despite very similar hardware, the initial feel of WebOS on the Pixi Plus is faster than Maemo on my N900--although this is very likely down to running widgets on the N900, a feature that I find very useful that does not exist in WebOS. [The Register] Credit card companies plan to <i>sell</i> your purchase data to advertisers: Evil plot may end up buried in the T&Cs ... Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc are working on a system for delivering online behavioural adverts to consumers based on what they buy in shops, according to media reports.? [matt [wronka.org]] matt [wronka.org] dmr: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/10/obituary-0 matt [wronka.org]: With such a shift, the mobile phone I buy in 2015 might approach the features that pre iOSdroid phones had, which will be pleasant. That gives about three iterations. matt [wronka.org]: I am wondering if the minor bump in spec brought by the Google Galaxy Nexus mobile device is indicatie of a maturation and slow-down in terms of mobile device hardware, and a larger shift towards a focus on software power. matt [wronka.org]: With the Android 4 SDK (ice cream sandwich) being released, Google and Samsung have announced the new Google phone (Galaxy Nexus), which looks striking similar to the previous model in terms of hardware spec. matt [wronka.org]: How thoughtful: after purchasing Touchpad accessories at shopping.hp.com, it pops-up (courtesy of pricegrabber) the opportunty to win an iPad 2 if I write a review! matt [wronka.org]: Apparently pressing thorn twice on the soft keyboard in WebOS (in X) locks the control key. I am sure there's a use for that.
Photos
Ballantyne Fog
Prolixium posted a photo:
Could have been foggier.
Freedom Tower
Prolixium posted a photo:
NYC from Weehawken. Autofocus made a mess of this, so don't zoom in.
Rue des Bouchers
beezhive posted a photo:
Looking down Rue des Bouchers , near Delirium Cafe in Brussels, Belgium. The street was lined with outdoor seating for restaurants and bars.
Hand held, straightened and slight exposure adjustment in Aperture.
(19944)Food? BYO
beezhive posted a photo:
We saw this sign at a cafe in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I loved the bold colors, and the sign itself somehow reminds me of old Soviet propaganda.
Hipster Equestrians
beezhive posted a photo:
When we visited Antwerp, the downtown area was closed for some sort of fitness/bicycling event. We saw these people playing polo in the downtown area.
Entries
Nelson Minar: No longer loving Google, Inc. (160 characters) Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:00:00 -0500Nelson Minar: No longer loving Google, Inc.HotLinks
cobra libre : Nelson Minar: No longer loving Google, Inc. - "And if a big company like Google can't avoid being evil, then what world-changing enterprise can?"
VeriSign Hacked, Successfully and Repeatedly, in 2010 (1032 characters) Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:49:00 -0500VeriSign Hacked, Successfully and Repeatedly, in 2010Schneier on Security
Reuters discovered the information:
The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.
The company, unsurprisingly, is saying nothing.
VeriSign declined multiple interview requests, and senior employees said privately that they had not been given any more details than were in the filing. One said it was impossible to tell if the breach was the result of a concerted effort by a national power, though that was a possibility. "It's an ugly, slim sliver of facts. It's not enough," he said.
The problem for all of us, naturally, is if the certificate system was hacked, allowing the bad guys to forge certificates. (This has, of course, happened before.)
Are we finally ready to accept that the certificate system is completely broken?
Jackpot: astronomers tag Goldilocks planet (308 characters) Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:00:00 -0500Jackpot: astronomers tag Goldilocks planetThe Register
GJ 667C is practically a next-door neighbor
While the Kepler mission turns up its ever-growing crop of exoplanets, a group of astronomers has announced an exciting find closer to home: looking towards Scorpius, there?s a super-Earth-sized planet just 22 light-years distant, with a habitable-zone orbit.?
Americans don't like coffee (429 characters) Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:29:00 -0500Americans don't like coffeeBohmian.org - Matthew Wronka
Americans in general don't like coffee. Other than an actual coffee house and fine restaurants, it is nearly impossible to find good coffee in the United States. Usually what one finds is not particularly good coffee which suits most Americans' taste for something in which they can pour cream without feeling like they're drinking something incredibly unhealthy. Americans are quite good at rationalizing their food choices.Not particularly good coffee (349 characters) Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:26:00 -0500Not particularly good coffeeBohmian.org - Matthew Wronka
Many restaurants and diners, particularly in the United States, serve not particularly good coffee. The qualities of their coffee which prevent it from being reasonably considered good often involves being watered down and almost universally involves an absolute lack of flavour. My leading theory for why this is that Americans don't like coffee.Jess Klein: Webmaking 101 for Journalists: A Prototype (2832 characters) Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:17:00 -0500Jess Klein: Webmaking 101 for Journalists: A PrototypePlanet Mozilla
Lately, I have been thinking about how to teach people something unexpected while they are working on something that they are passionate about. It sounds kind of obvious, but my goal isn't to trick someone into learning or to serve them medicine in their sugar. I want to create authentic learning experiences around webmaking projects. I believe that if you are really invested in something, then you will seek out the learning. It's not an innovative idea- but it is a guiding principle behind my design. So, with this in mind, recently, a bunch of my Mozilla colleagues and I brainstormed around the idea of how to teach journalists the basics of html, css and copyright in an authentic way.
As a group, we came up with several learning objectives - really focused on the introductory skills that a) anyone who was starting in webmaking would need and b) a journalist would be compelled to learn
The idea is that a user will come to the the website, and then enter a url of a story that they have written. If they do not have a url, then we will generate a creative commons page from propublica.com
Next, the user's story will be scrapped of style and put into the js.bin shell-similar to our lovebomb and webpage maker prototypes. However, instead of letting a user just do pure hacking in the wild- there is a third layer (seen above in the highly visible color of yellow). The yellow layer is a slider that will provide progressive instructions and tips to the user.
I started to work on a mock up just to play around a bit with look and feel. (above) I made a mood board using pinterest. Basically, we are going for clean, serious- but playful, modern.Right now, although I think that this is a good first prototype, I am really thinking about the learning objectives here. Are these the right learning objectives? Are we just skinning this as something for journalists because that is one of main target audiences at Mozilla? I'm wondering if we should be making a more generic webmaking 101 tool, and creating supplementary curriculum for the target audiences- as opposed to tools for the niche audience. In some ways, this has more merit, because the tools could be informed by the various end users- journalists, filmmakers etc, however it could appeal to a much larger constituency. On the other hand, if we create a tool that could easily be reskinned and modded for different audiences, I could see the value in that.However... if we were to in fact make a more general webmaking 101 step by step tool/ game- ultimately I wonder if this really is the best way to communicate to new users the excitement and potential of webmaking?Next week my Mozilla colleagues- Atul, Brian, Dan, Michelle, Erin and I will be doing a design sprint on this. I would love to hear any thoughts that you might have, reader friend.matt [wronka.org] Comcast (1206 characters) Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:42:00 -0500matt [wronka.org] Comcastmatt [wronka.org]
PING 66.30.112.1 (66.30.112.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=0 ttl=255 time=7.868 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=6 ttl=255 time=11.037 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=7 ttl=255 time=8.356 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=12 ttl=255 time=33.440 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=13 ttl=255 time=9.724 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=18 ttl=255 time=15.276 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=19 ttl=255 time=6.581 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=20 ttl=255 time=13.213 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=1 ttl=255 time=19025.642 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=2 ttl=255 time=18025.279 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=3 ttl=255 time=17024.912 ms
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64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=5 ttl=255 time=15026.039 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=6 ttl=255 time=14025.675 ms (DUP!)
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=25 ttl=255 time=15.027 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=26 ttl=255 time=8.341 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=8 ttl=255 time=18315.091 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=9 ttl=255 time=17314.820 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=10 ttl=255 time=16314.465 ms
64 bytes from 66.30.112.1: seq=11 ttl=255 time=15314.103 msmatt [wronka.org] Aastra to Asterisk (339 characters) Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:10:00 -0500matt [wronka.org] Aastra to Asteriskmatt [wronka.org]
After telling myself it couldn't possibly be a codec negotiation issue, prox brought up the possibility as the only thing of which he could think would cause my audio issues on outgoing calls. It turns out he was right, and I should have looked further into it originally:
http://bohmian.org/disc/Aastra_Asterisk_codec_negotiation_issuesAastra Asterisk codec negotiation issues (600 characters) Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:08:00 -0500Aastra Asterisk codec negotiation issuesBohmian.org - Matthew Wronka
It seems that with at least certain version of the Asterisk PBX, and the firmware I am running on my Aastra 6757i phones, the Aastra phone will try to negotiate a 16kbps version of G.711 (presumably as specified in G.711.1), and when Asterisks tries to send audio back to the phone, it isn't converted to an audible form.
I haven't investigated upon which end this problem exists (i.e. whether Asterisks is sending bad or no audio, or if the phone is interpreting it incorrectly). What I can see is that setting the codecs to basic (or manually specifying functional codecs) results in correct audio.Color Management On Linux (378 characters) Comments (1)Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:42:00 -0500Color Management On Linuxdarktable
Pascal de Bruijn wrote an extensive article about color management on Linux systems, covering basic explanations as well as the description of some tools. There seems to be a lot of confusion about what color management is, what it is supposed to do, and most particularly how to use it on Linux. Find the article here: http://blog.pcode.nl/2012/01/29/color-management-on-linux/
The Philly unburglary (333 characters) Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:22:00 -0500The Philly unburglarykottke.org
Aaron Cohen calls this "the best story you'll read about a burglary you'll read this week" and I think he's right.
crime John DavidsonWhen John Davidson's apartment gets robbed, he learns that the easiest way to get his stuff back is to have one drug dealer lie to another drug dealer while he lies to the police.
Comic for January 24, 2012 (2 characters) Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:00:00 -0500Comic for January 24, 2012Dilbert Daily Strip
United States v. Jones is a Near-Optimal Result (6980 characters) Comments (1)Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:57:00 -0500United States v. Jones is a Near-Optimal ResultFreedom to Tinker
This morning, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in United States v. Jones, the GPS tracking case, deciding unanimously that the government violated the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights when it installed a wireless GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of his car and used it to monitor his movement's around town for four weeks without a search warrant.
Despite the unanimous result, the court was not unified in its reasoning. Five Justices signed the majority opinion, authored by Justice Scalia, finding that the Fourth Amendment "at bottom . . . assure[s] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted" and thus analyzing the case under "common-law trespassory" principles.
Justice Alito wrote a concurring opinion, signed by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, faulting the majority for "decid[ing] the case based on 18th-century tort law" and arguing instead that the case should be decided under Katz's "reasonable expectations of privacy" test. Applying Katz, the four concurring Justices would have found that the government violated the Fourth Amendment because "long-term tracking" implicated a reasonable expectation of privacy and thus required a warrant.
Justice Sotomayor, who signed the majority opinion, wrote a separate concurring opinion, but more on that in a second.
I think the Jones court reached the correct result in this case, and I think that the three opinions in this case represent a near-optimal result for those who want the Court to recognize how its present Fourth Amendment jurisprudence does far too little to protect privacy and limit unwarranted government power in light of recent advances in surveillance technology. This might seem counter-intuitive. I predict that many news stories about Jones will pitch it as an epic battle between Scalia's property-centric and Alito's privacy-centric approaches to the Fourth Amendment and quote people expressing regret that Justice Alito didn't instead win the day. I think this would focus on the wrong thing, underplaying how today's three opinions--all of them--represent a significant advance for Constitutional privacy, for several reasons:
1. Justice Alito? Maybe I'm not a savvy court watcher, but I did not see this coming. The fact that Justice Alito wrote such a strong privacy-centric opinion suggests that future Fourth Amendment litigants will see a well-defined path to five votes, especially since it seems like Justice Sotomayor will likely provide the fifth vote in the right future case.
2. Justice Scalia and Thomas showed restraint. The majority opinion goes out of its way to highlight that its focus on property is not meant to foreclose privacy-based analyses in the future. It uses the words "at bottom" and "at a minimum" to hammer home the idea that it is supplementing Katz not replacing it. Maybe Justice Scalia did this to win Justice Sotomayor's vote, but even if so, I am heartened that neither Justice Scalia nor Justice Thomas thought it necessary to write a separate concurrence arguing that Katz's privacy focus should be replaced with a focus only on property rights.
3. Justice Sotomayor does not like the third-party doctrine. It's probably best here just to quote from the opinion:
More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. E.g., Smith, 442 U.S., at 742; United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976). This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. Perhaps, as JUSTICE ALITO notes, some people may find the "tradeoff" of privacy for convenience "worthwhile," or come to accept this "dimunition of privacy" as "inevitable," post, at 10, and perhaps not. I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.
Wow. And Amen. Set your stopwatches: the death watch for the third-party doctrine has finally begun.
4. This was the wrong case for a privacy overhaul of the Fourth Amendment. Most importantly, I've had misgivings about using Jones as the vehicle for fixing what is broken with the Fourth Amendment. GPS vehicle tracking comes laden with lots of baggage--practical, jurisprudential and atmospheric--that other actively litigated areas of modern surveillance do not. GPS vehicle tracking happens on public streets, meaning it runs into dozens of Supreme Court pronouncements about assumption of risk and voluntarily disclosure. It faces two prior precedents, Karo and Knotts, that need to be distinguished or possibly overturned. It does not suffer (as far as we know) from a long history of use against innocent people, but instead seems mostly used to track fugitives and drug dealers.
For all of these reasons, even the most privacy-minded Justice is likely to recognize caveats and exceptions in crafting a new rule for GPS tracking. Imagine if Justice Sotomayor had signed Justice Alito's opinion instead of Justice Scalia's. We would've been left with a holding that allowed short-term monitoring but not long-term monitoring, without a precise delineation between the two. We would've been left with the possible new caveat that the rules change when the police investigate "extraordinary offenses," also undefined. These unsatisfying, vague new rules would have had downstream negative effects on lower court opinions analyzing URL or search query monitoring, or cell phone tower monitoring, or packet sniffing.
Better that we have the big "reinventing Katz" debate in a case that isn't so saddled with the confusions of following cars on public streets. I hope the Supreme Court next faces a surveillance technique born purely on the Internet, one in which "classic trespassory search is not involved." If the votes hold from Jones, we might end up with what many legal scholars have urged: a retrenchment or reversal of the third-party doctrine; a Fourth Amendment jurisprudence better tailored to the rise of the Internet; and a better Constitutional balance in this country between privacy and security.
Feds: Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Pixar had wage-fixing no-poach pact (288 characters) Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:27:00 -0500Feds: Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Pixar had wage-fixing no-poach pactThe Register
Lucasfilm also named: Says it has no need of techies
Emails between Apple, Adobe, Intel and others are making them look bad as the US Justice Department mounts a case against them for setting up "anti-poaching" deals in which they allegedly agreed not to hire each other's people away.?
Perry exits (1739 characters) Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:56:00 -0500Perry exitsLexington's notebook
THE almost certain departure of Rick Perry from the Republican nomination race this morning was not a terrific surprise. The real wonder was why the Texas governor changed his mind about giving up after Iowa. And even before the Iowa caucuses it had become embarrassingly clear that he lacked the qualities required to run for president. Though his horrible "oops" moment in November (when he couldn't remember the third government department he wanted to abolish) was the beginning of the end, there was a lot more to it than that.
In a series of debates Mr Perry showed a comprehensive and unforgivable ignorance of the world beyond America. First he seemed hardly to have heard about the existence of Pakistan (or, as he put it, "the Pakistani country"). In New Hampshire last week he seemed to say on the spur of the moment that he would send American forces back into Iraq. And in this week's debate in South Carolina he claimed that Turkey's government was run by "terrorists". Little wonder that he decided to spare himself another ordeal at the Charleston debate tonight. You have to wonder why a man of such towering ignorance ever thought he had the right to aspire to the White House.
The media have to ask themselves some hard questions too. That includes me. In July I wrote a print column arguing that his long record of success in state elections and the narrative he could spin around Texas's record of job creation would make him a formidable candidate. All I can plead in mitigation was that I was not alone. But the moral here is that the leap from the politics of a state, even a huge one like Texas, to the national level is a vast one. He should have stayed at home, and we should have been better at judging him.
"Stolen" LinkedIn Profiles and the Misappropriation of Ideas (4319 characters) Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:19:00 -0500"Stolen" LinkedIn Profiles and the Misappropriation of IdeasFreedom to Tinker
The common law tort of "hot news" misappropriation has been dying a slow and justified death. Hot news misappropriation is the legal doctrine on which news outlets like the Associated Press have repeatedly relied over the years to try to prevent third-party dissemination of factual information gathered at the outlets? expense. Last June, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to the hot news doctrine when it held that financial firms engaged in producing research reports and recommendations concerning publicly traded securities could not prevent a third party website from publishing news of the recommendations soon after their initial release. The rationale for the court?s decision was that state law claims of hot news misappropriation can only very rarely survive federal preemption by the Copyright Act, which excludes facts from the scope of copyright protection. The rule that facts are not eligible for copyright (called the fact-expression dichotomy) is at the heart of the copyright system and serves the interests of democracy by promoting the unfettered dissemination of important news to the populace. Creative arrangements of facts can be protected under copyright law, but individual facts cannot.
Given the declining fortunes of the hot news doctrine, I was a little surprised to discover a recent case out of Pennsylvania called Eagle v. Morgan, in which the parties are fighting over ownership of a LinkedIn account containing the plaintiff?s profile and her professional connections. The defendant, Eagle?s former employer, asserted a state law counterclaim for misappropriation of ideas. Ideas, as it happens, are?like facts?excluded from the scope of federal copyright protection for a compelling policy reason: If we permit the monopolization of ideas themselves, we will stifle the communal intellectual progress that intellectual property laws exist to promote. Copyright law thus protects only the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves. (This principle is known as the idea-expression dichotomy.) Accordingly, section 102(b) of the Copyright Act denies copyright protection ?to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied.? The statute really could not be clearer.
In its opinion denying Eagle?s motion for judgment on the pleadings, the trial court did not consider whether the state law tort of misappropriation of ideas is federally preempted by the Copyright Act, which seems to me to be a really important legal question. The court explained that a claim for misappropriation of an idea in Pennsylvania has two elements: ?(1) the plaintiff had an idea that was novel and concrete and (2) the idea was misappropriated by the defendant.? To determine whether a misappropriation has occurred, the court further explained, Pennsylvania law requires consideration of three factors:
- (1) the plaintiff ?has made substantial investment of time, effort, and money into creating the thing misappropriated such that the court can characterize the ?thing? as a kind of property right,? (2) the defendant ?has appropriated the ?thing? at little or no cost such that the court can characterize the defendant?s actions as ?reaping where it has not sown,?? and (3) the defendant ?has injured the plaintiff by the misappropriation.?
Setting aside the oddity of classifying digital information as a ?thing,? the first of these factors collides head on with the Supreme Court?s clear repudiation in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service of the ?sweat of the brow? theory of intellectual property.
In Feist, the Court held that ?sweat of the brow? as a justification for propertizing information ?eschew[s] the most fundamental axiom of copyright law?that no one may copyright facts or ideas.? Given copyright law?s express prohibition on the propertization of ideas, there is a strong case to be made that state law claims for misappropriation of ideas are in direct conflict with both the letter and spirit of the federal copyright scheme. On that basis, they are akin to claims of hot news misappropriation, and they should likewise be treated as preempted.
Brazil is the only BRIC country standing ground on Internet Freedom. Here is why. (5502 characters) Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:56:00 -0500Brazil is the only BRIC country standing ground on Internet Freedom. Here is why.Freedom to Tinker
A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a piece covering a new report launched by OECD calling member-countries to ?promote and protect the global free flow of information?. The article lists three BRIC-members, China, India and Russia, as examples of countries taking actions harmful to online freedom. One BRIC member is missing from the list: Brazil. Despite hiccups, Brazil has been taking a strong position for protecting freedom and other civil rights online. Why is that?
One reason is that Brazil is is a rather young democracy. From 1964 to 1985 the country was governed by a military regime, which imposed strict censorship rules. Major artists, newspapers, and tv networks had to submit their activities to prior approval by a censorship board. When democracy was reestablished in 1986, censorship was eliminated, but the trauma of 20 years of repression had been painfully imprinted in the Brazilian society. This trauma has made Brazil very sensitive to new threats of censorship, in its many forms.
Another landmark was a decision taken by the country's Supreme Court in 2009. The court struck down the Press Law, adopted in 1967 by the military government (the same law that had established censorship). When the country was re-democratized, the censorship articles were revoked. Nonetheless, other parts regulating libel, defamation and the ?right of reply? survived. The court decided to strike everything down (in spite of a heated debate claiming that the remaining articles were reasonable), stating the law was incompatible with the freedom of expression clause of the Brazilian constitution.
Another factor is that president Dilma Rousseff has been taking a public stance in favor of freedom of expression. It makes sense. In the 1960s, she was imprisoned and tortured during the military regime for participating in a dissident group. Unswervingly, she declared at a recent human rights conference that she ?prefers the noise of the press to the silence of the dictatorship?.
Moreover, Brazil has a vigorous civil society, which emerged especially with the country?s new democratic constitution in 1988. Many civil society organizations are concerned with online freedom issues, including consumer associations, artists groups, newspapers and journalists associations, NGOs for education, free and open source software organizations, the academia, lawyers and judges associations, to name a few. Their claims have been taken into account by the political system. Government and Congress in Brazil remain permeable to the civil society. Even if lobbying and special interests do exist and exercise strong influence, it is rather difficult for politicians to save face for policies flagrantly against the public interest.
The strength of civil society reinforced Brazil?s commitment to internet freedom and also led to concrete policy-making. One example is the Marco Civil ("Civil Rights Framework for the Internet?), a draft bill seeking to protect civil rights online, such as freedom of expression and privacy, and to create balanced rules for the liability of internet intermediaries.
The bill is the result of a two-year online debate open to the public at-large. The process was put together by the Ministry of Justice and the Center for Technology & Society, a research center in Rio de Janeiro (full disclosure ? I am the director of the Center for Technology & Society, and was involved in the Marco Civil process). The bill was sent to Congress by the Federal government in 2011, with co-sponsorship of five Ministries. Marco Civil has become a well-known issue in the Brazilian public sphere, and it has gathered strong public support. Approval is expected sometime in 2012.
Internationally, some view Marco Civil as an alternative approach to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), the bill currently in discussion in Congress in the US, under strong criticism. While SOPA tilts the balance of the law in the direction of expedite enforcement, by-passing the judiciary in favor of a private notice-and-takedown system, Marco Civil supports a more balanced approach. It seeks to translate the principles established by the Brazilian Constitution into online practices, paying especial attention to due process, freedom of expression, and the protection of an environment favorable to innovation. Because of that, some also view Marco Civil as a counterpoint to ACTA, the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, criticized for potentially harming fundamental rights.
Of course the situation in Brazil is not all roses. The Brazilian Ministry of Culture has changed its policies in the beginning of 2011. Under the guidance of the new Minister Ana de Hollanda (claimed to have close ties to the controversial copyright collecting society in Brazil - ECAD - which is currently under investigation for fraud by by a special Congressional Inquiry Commission) has been trying to introduce legislation in Congress for creating a private systems for removing online content, inspired in part by the DMCA. This effort and other actions of the Ministry have raised vast waves of criticism, both by civil society and also by many sectors in the government´s party.
These hiccups, nevertheless, do not change the fact that, for now, Brazil seems to be committed to protecting internet freedom against all odds. That is a good way of taking seriously the recommendation of the OECD, and also of setting a good example for the BRIC colleagues.
Lytro shooting event shows off possible extra features (363 characters) Comments (1)Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:30:00 -0500Lytro shooting event shows off possible extra featuresNews: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Light field camera maker Lytro has been demonstrating early versions of potential features during a shooting event at CES. The event gave journalists the chance to use the cameras and try the 'Advanced Light Field Mode' that the company is experimenting with. We went along and have written this report about what it's like to use a Light Field camera.
Recovering a Hacked Gmail Account (210 characters) Comments (1)Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:58:00 -0500Recovering a Hacked Gmail AccountSchneier on Security
Long (but well-written and interesting) story of someone whose Gmail account was hacked and erased, and eventually restored. Many interesting lessons about the security of largely support-free cloud services.
X Prize: Build a <i>Star Trek</i> 'tricorder' and win $10m (172 characters) Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:02:00 -0500X Prize: Build a <i>Star Trek</i> 'tricorder' and win $10mThe Register
CATCH: It has to work...
Make a portable body scanner that can detect 15 diseases and capture key health metrics and you could win 10 million dollars (£.6.5m).?
Comic for January 13, 2012 (2 characters) Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:00:00 -0500Comic for January 13, 2012Dilbert Daily Strip
Oakland Cops Demoted, Suspended For Covering Name Tags During Occupy Oakland (1070 characters) Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:44:00 -0500Oakland Cops Demoted, Suspended For Covering Name Tags During Occupy Oaklandjwz
An Oakland police lieutenant has been demoted and an officer is facing a one-month suspension because the officer was videotaped at a recent Occupy Oakland protest with the name on his uniform covered by black tape, sources said Wednesday.
Officer John Hargraves, who has been with the Police Department for five years, covered his first initial and last name while providing security at police headquarters during the Nov. 2 general strike, a video shot by Terrence Jerod Williams showed.
In the video, Williams told Hargraves, "It's kind of weird that you actually are not showing your name. Why is that? Simple question."
Hargraves did not respond. Williams then approached Lt. Clifford Wong, who was standing with other officers outside the building on Seventh Street downtown. After an inaudible conversation between Hargraves and Wong, Wong removed the tape.
After an internal investigation, Hargraves was ordered suspended for 30 days, and Wong was demoted to sergeant for failing to report the incident to internal affairs.
Collecting Expert Predictions about Terrorist Attacks (1406 characters) Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:56:00 -0500Collecting Expert Predictions about Terrorist AttacksSchneier on Security
John Mueller has been collecting them:
Some 116 of these Very People were surveyed in 2006 by Foreign Policy magazine in a joint project with the Center for America Progress. The magazine stressed that its survey drew from the "highest echelons of America?s foreign policy establishment" and included the occasional secretary of state and national security adviser, as well as top military commanders, seasoned members of the intelligence community, and academics and journalists of the most "distinguished" nature. Over three-quarters of them had been in government service, 41 percent for over ten years. The musings of this group, it was proposed, could provide "definitive conclusions" about the global war on terror.
The Very People were asked to put forward their considered opinions about how likely it was that "a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11" would again occur in the United States by the end of 2011 -- that is, by last Saturday.
Fully 70 percent found it likely and another 9 percent proclaimed it to be certain. Only 21 percent, correctly as we now know, considered it unlikely.
I've never heard this particular quote before, and find it particularly profound:
In 2004, Russell Seitz plausibly proposed that "9/11 could join the Trojan Horse and Pearl Harbor among stratagems so uniquely surprising that their very success precludes their repetition"....
More predictions here.
The TSA Proves its Own Irrelevance (1843 characters) Comments (1)Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:00:00 -0500The TSA Proves its Own IrrelevanceSchneier on Security
Have you wondered what $1.2 billion in airport security gets you? The TSA has compiled its own "Top 10 Good Catches of 2011":
10) Snakes, turtles, and birds were found at Miami (MIA) and Los Angeles (LAX). I?m just happy there weren?t any lions, tigers, and bears?
[...]
3) Over 1,200 firearms were discovered at TSA checkpoints across the nation in 2011. Many guns are found loaded with rounds in the chamber. Most passengers simply state they forgot they had a gun in their bag.
2) A loaded .380 pistol was found strapped to passenger?s ankle with the body scanner at Detroit (DTW). You guessed it, he forgot it was there?
1) Small chunks of C4 explosives were found in passenger?s checked luggage in Yuma (YUM). Believe it or not, he was brining it home to show his family.
That's right; not a single terrorist on the list. Mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent, people. Note that they fail to point out that the firearms and knives would have been just as easily caught by pre-9/11 screening procedures. And that the C4 -- their #1 "good catch" -- was on the return flight; they missed it the first time. So only 1 for 2 on that one.
And the TSA decided not to mention its stupidest confiscations:
TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl's purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it?s a "replica weapon." TSA confiscates a liquid-filled baby rattle from airline pilot?s infant daughter. TSA confiscates a plastic "Star Wars" lightsaber from a toddler.
In related news, here's a rebuttal of the the Vanity Fair article about the TSA and airline security that featured me. I agree with this two points at the end of the post; I just don't think it changes any of my analysis.
PayPal hates violins (1039 characters) Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:15:00 -0500PayPal hates violinskottke.org
A woman recently sold an antique French violin for $2500 to a buyer who disputed the violin's worth/authenticity. What happened next is maddening and asinine.
I sold an old French violin to a buyer in Canada, and the buyer disputed the label.
This is not uncommon. In the violin market, labels often mean little and there is often disagreement over them. Some of the most expensive violins in the world have disputed labels, but they are works of art nonetheless.
Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back. They somehow deemed the violin as "counterfeit" even though there is no such thing in the violin world.
Hey Peter Thiel, instead of whining about the iPhone, Twitter, and internet not being innovative and life-changing enough, why don't you fix this life-ruining piece of shit company that you crapped into the world? That would definitely be a "net plus". And DAMMIT, you made me link to TechCrunch! Argh!! (via @ftrain)
PayPal Peter ThielMarvel lawyers insist mutants aren't humans (158 characters) Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:00:00 -0500Marvel lawyers insist mutants aren't humansHotLinks
Andy Baio : Marvel lawyers insist mutants aren't humans - to avoid getting taxed as "dolls," rather than lower for "toys"; story starts at 2:50 in the audio
Kaufmann's Posographe (146 characters) Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:00:00 -0500Kaufmann's PosographeHotLinks
nelson : Kaufmann's Posographe - An old analog calculator for photographers
Tags : via:metafilter calculator sliderule photography photo history
College professor seeds Internet with fake term paper to catch plagiarists (107 characters) Comments (1)Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:00:00 -0500College professor seeds Internet with fake term paper to catch plagiaristsHotLinks
Andy Baio : College professor seeds Internet with fake term paper to catch plagiarists - hilarity ensues
Today on the Lying with Numbers show... (1052 characters) Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:01:00 -0500Today on the Lying with Numbers show...jwz
Nielsen Soundscan Stops Making Sense
For like the 4th year in a row, Nielsen Soundscan is trying to convince us all that selling a billion things for $1 is somehow a sales increase over selling a half-billion things for $10-$15 each.
"According to the Nielsen Co.'s year-end figures, music purchases - CD, vinyl, cassette and digital purchases of entire albums (grouped together as total albums), plus digital track downloads, singles and music videos - attained a new high of 1.5 billion, up 10.5% over 2007." -- Ken Barnes, USA Today
This requires you to believe that selling three songs for $1 each is an improvement over selling a CD for $15. This is about the stupidest fucking way I can think of to measure sales when the price disparity between items is so great and the "gain" is in the cheapest item. But the L.A. Times went with it, using a headline that says "Overall music sales hit an all-time high in 2009; Taylor Swift's Fearless is the year's top-selling album." The truth is that no, they didn't, and no, it wasn't.
- Comments (1)
matt [wronka.org] Google Alerts (356 characters) Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:38:00 -0500matt [wronka.org] Google Alertsmatt [wronka.org]
Many people may not be aware that I actually use Google for its 'Alerts' feature, which is pretty useful. As Google looks around the Web, if they find something that matches terms you have registered, it will send you an eMail.
I get a lot from various news sources. What I really want is to hit reply and correct them. Maybe that will be in version 2.Comic for December 19, 2011 (2 characters) Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:00:00 -0500Comic for December 19, 2011Dilbert Daily Strip
Farewell, earthlings (2239 characters) Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:44:00 -0500Farewell, earthlingsBanyan
NORTH KOREAN state media has just announced the death of leader Kim Jong Il. According to the report (on this site, when it's not overwhelmed by traffic), he passed away on Saturday 17th December, at 8.30am, while travelling on a train to visit an area outside of Pyongyang.The report, delivered by a tearful, black-clad announcer, claimed that he died due to "an advanced acute myocardial infarction, complicated by serious heart shock," which was caused by "a great mental and physical strain caused by his uninterrupted field guidance tour for the building of a thriving nation." It is of course no secret that he had been unwell for several years, having suffered a stroke in 2008, and often appearing frail in public appearances.
Kim?s declining health had prompted the regime to accelerate progress towards the planned succession of his third son, Kim Jong Un. The report itself exhorted viewers to ?loyally follow? the Swiss-educated, would-be third-generation leader, whom his father chose ahead of two elder sons, apparently due a ruthless streak that runs beneath his pudgy features.
Still in his late twenties, and with very little experience of leadership, the younger Kim may yet face trouble when it comes to grasping the reins of power. Kim Jong Il himself had already been the heir-apparent to his father, the founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il Sung, for almost two decades before he was declared the country?s ?Dear Leader? and thrust upon the throne of the Democratic People?s Republic in 1975. Kim Jong Un will have no such luxury. But that does not mean that crisis is imminent. Kim Han-jong, who visited North Korea with South Korea?s President Kim Dae-jung at a momentous summit in 2000, states we should ?not expect Kim Jong Il?s death to be followed by big political change?, owing to China?s apparent support for the regime as well as to the internal efforts to speed up the succession.
South Korea is however on a state of high alert. The KOSPI index dived 3% at noon, following the announcement. In the coming days, all eyes will be on Pyongyang, and the attempts of one young man to lay his claim to the world?s only communist monarchy.
(Picture credit: AFP)
RIP Christopher Hitchens (1411 characters) Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:06:00 -0500RIP Christopher Hitchenskottke.org
Critic and writer Christopher Hitchens died last night at the age of 62 from complications of esophageal cancer.
"My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends," he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.
Although I suspect there will be posthumous writings to come, Hitchens' final piece for Vanity Fair, published in the January 2012 issue, is a rumination on pain and death.
Christopher Hitchens obituariesBefore I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to "do" death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that "Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger."
Stopping SOPA's Anticircumvention (4268 characters) Comments (1)Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:36:00 -0500Stopping SOPA's AnticircumventionFreedom to Tinker
The House's Stop Online Piracy Act is in Judiciary Committee Markup today. As numerous protests, open letters,and advocacy campaignsacross the Web, this is a seriously flawed bill. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darell Issa's proposed OPEN Act points out, by contrast, some of the procedural problems.
Here, I analyze just one of the problematic provisions of SOPA: a new "anticircumvention" provision (different from the still-problematic anti-circumvention of section 1201). SOPA's anticircumvention authorizes injunctions against the provision of tools to bypass the court-ordered blocking of domains. Although it is apparently aimed at MAFIAAfire, the Firefox add-on that offered redirection for seized domains in the wake of ICE seizures, [1] the provision as drafted sweeps much more broadly. Ordinary security and connectivity tools could fall within its scope. If enacted, it would weaken Internet security and reduce the robustness and resilience of Internet connections.
The anticircumvention section, which is not present in the Senate's companion PROTECT-IP measure, provides for injunctions, on the action of the Attorney General:
(ii)against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed by such entity or by another in concert with such entity for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) [blocking DNS responses, search query results, payments, or ads] and taken in response to a court order issued under this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service. § 102(c)(3)(A)(ii)
As an initial problem, the section is unclear. Could it cover someone who designs a tool for "the circumvention or bypassing of" DNS blockages in general -- even if such a person did not specifically intend or market the tool to be used to frustrate court orders issued under SOPA? Resilience in the face of technological failure is a fundamental software design goal. As DNS experts Steve Crocker, et al. say in their Dec. 9 letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Chairs, "a secure application expecting a secure DNS answer will not give up after a timeout. It might retry the lookup, it might try a backup DNS server, it might even restart the lookup through a proxy service." Would the providers of software that looked to a proxy for answers --products "designed" to be resilient to transient DNS lookup failures --be subject to injunction? Where the answer is unclear, developers might choose not to offer such lawful features rather than risking legal attack. Indeed, the statute as drafted might chill the development of anti-censorship tools funded by our State Department.
Some such tools are explicitly designed to circumvent censorship in repressive regimes whose authorities engage in DNS manipulation to prevent citizens from accessing sites with dissident messages, alternate sources of news, or human rights reporting. (See Rebecca MacKinnon's NYT Op-Ed, Stop the Great Firewall of America. Censorship-circumvention tools include Psiphon, which describes itself as an "Open source web proxy designed to help Internet users affected by Internet censorship securely bypass content-filtering systems," and The Tor Project.) These tools cannot distinguish between Chinese censorship of Tiananmen Square mentions and U.S. copyright protection where their impacts -- blocking access to Web content -- and their methods -- local blocking of domain resolution -- are the same.
Finally, the paragraph may encompass mere knowledge-transfer. Does telling someone about alternate DNS resolvers, or noting that a blocked domain can still be found at its IP address -- a matter of historical record and necessary to third-party evaluation of the claims against that site -- constitute willfully "providing a service designed ... [for] bypassing" DNS-blocking? Archives of historic DNS information are often important information to legal or technical network investigations, but might become scarce if providers had to ascertain the reasons their information was being sought.
For these reasons among many others (such as those identified by my ISP colleague Nick), SOPA should be stopped.
Newfangled graphics engine for browsers fosters data theft (267 characters) Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:28:00 -0500Newfangled graphics engine for browsers fosters data theftThe Register
The shady truth behind CSS shaders
Software developers at Google, Apple, Adobe, and elsewhere are grappling with the security risks posed by an emerging graphics technology, which in its current form could expose millions of web users' sensitive data to attackers.?
Feeling vs. Reality of Security in Sparrows (1193 characters) Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:22:00 -0500Feeling vs. Reality of Security in SparrowsSchneier on Security
Sparrows have fewer surviving offspring if they feel insecure, regardless of whether they actually are insecure. Liana Y. Zanette, Aija F. White, Marek C. Allen, and Michael Clinchy, "Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year," Science, 9 Dec 2011:
Predator effects on prey demography have traditionally been ascribed solely to direct killing in studies of population ecology and wildlife management. Predators also affect the prey's perception of predation risk, but this has not been thought to meaningfully affect prey demography. We isolated the effects of perceived predation risk in a free-living population of song sparrows by actively eliminating direct predation and used playbacks of predator calls and sounds to manipulate perceived risk. We found that the perception of predation risk alone reduced the number of offspring produced per year by 40%. Our results suggest that the perception of predation risk is itself powerful enough to affect wildlife population dynamics, and should thus be given greater consideration in vertebrate conservation and management.
Seems as if the sparrows could use a little security theater.
Yet More Fear-Mongering from the DHS (547 characters) Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:17:00 -0500Yet More Fear-Mongering from the DHSSchneier on Security
Al Qaeda is sewing bombs into people. Actually, not really. This is an "aspirational" terrorist threat, which basically means that someone mentioned it while drunk in a bar somewhere. Of course, that won't stop the DHS from trying to terrorize people with the idea and the security-industrial complex from selling us an expensive "solution" to reduce our fears.
Wired: "So: a disruptive, potentially expensive panic based on a wild aspirational scheme? Actually, that sounds a lot like al-Qaida. And the TSA."
Me: "Refuse to be terrorized."
Assessing Terrorist Threats to Commercial Aviation (2352 characters) Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:46:00 -0500Assessing Terrorist Threats to Commercial AviationSchneier on Security
This article on airplane security says many of the same things I've been saying for years:
Given the breadth and complexity of threats to commercial aviation, those who criticize the TSA and other aviation security regulatory agencies for reactive policies and overly narrow focus appear to have substantial grounding. Three particularly serious charges can be levied against the TSA: it overemphasizes defending against specific attack vectors (such as hijackings or passenger-borne IEDs) at the expense of others (such as insider threats or attacks on airports); it overemphasizes securing U.S. airports while failing to acknowledge the significantly greater threat posed to flights arriving or departing from foreign airports; and it has failed to be transparent with the American people that certain threats are either extremely difficult or beyond the TSA's ability to control. Furthermore, the adoption of cumbersome aviation security measures in the wake of failed attacks entails a financial burden on both governments and the airline industry, which has not gone unnoticed by jihadist propagandists and strategists. While the U.S. government has spent some $56 billion on aviation security measures since 9/11, AQAP prominently noted that its 2010 cargo plot cost a total of $4,900.
The author is a former Delta advisor. Wired talked to him:
Brandt says aviation security needs a fundamental overhaul. Not only is the aviation industry failing to keep up with the new terrorist tactics, TSA's regimen of scanning and groping is causing a public backlash. "From the public's perspective, this kind of refocusing would reduce the amount of screening they have to put up with in the United States," Brandt tells Danger Room, "and refocus it where it's needed."
[...]
None of this is going to be easy, or cheap. Brandt proposes that the government subsidize airlines for better employee background checks or explosives detection tech. But that's could strike taxpayers as a bailout.
On the other hand, he and Pistole actually share the same headspace, so it's possible that TSA will buy his overall critique. "The best defense is still developing solid intelligence on terrorist groups interested in targeting aviation," Brandt says. Beats treating us all like terrorists.
Or, as I say: investigation, intelligence, and emergency response.
Media
Lytro
Remember that camera that supposedly captures enough quantum hoo-ha that you can re-focus your pictures after the fact? Apparently it's actually shipping:
Since you'll capture the color, intensity, and direction of all the light, you can experience the first major light field capability - focusing after the fact. Focus and re-focus, anywhere in the picture. You can refocus your pictures at anytime, after the fact.
What's missing? Nothing you'll miss. No auto-focus, no shutter lag, no unnecessary modes, dials, or settings. And no flash, because Lytro can handle many low light settings. So, no obstacles to the perfect shot.
I'm curious how it works in the dark.