One of the best web sites around for keeping track of this growing phenomena has to be Photography is not a crime. Carlos Miller the person behind the site has himself been arrested for taking pictures of the police in February 27, 2007. In recent court testimony one of the policemen involved testified that he feared that Carlos was going to use his camera as a weapon. As wrong as this might seem to be the reality is that the police increasingly are harassing or arresting people seen pointing a camera or video camera at whatever they are doing.

This was the experience that Adam Kokesh, an Iraq War veteran, had recently in Washington DC which was reported on Carlos’ blog

Kokesh pulled out his cell phone and snapped a few photos, but the cop jumped out of his car and grabbed Kokesh, spinning him around and putting his hands on the car.

Within minutes, a dozen cop cars and undercover FBI agents swarmed Kokesh, handcuffing him and ordering him to delete the photos, but Kokesh refused.

One of the reason that maybe the police are taking this tacked is because it may end up showing them to be the ones doing the wrong thing much like the story that Carlos is following. In this case someone caught on video tape the real story behind the police arresting a bicyclist for supposedly using his bike to block traffic and then as a weapon against an officer. You can see what actually happened in the video below

This move to restrict the rights of photographers and videographers isn’t just a US thing as Nothing To Do With Arbroath does an excellent job of keeping track of these things in the U.K.

I’m sorry but this is a really sad reflection of society when something that we take to be a natural thing to do can suddenly end you up in jail.

Conversation Tags: photography, cameras, security, police

As integral a part of our lives that mobile phones have become there seems to be an almost lackadaisical attitude about when they go missing; whether they have been stolen or just plain lost for whatever reason. This attitude really struck with two separate incidents this past week or so where cell phones were lost and I was left with the impression of oh well I’ll just go and buy another one without any regard to how much it was going to cost to replace them and the loss of whatever data had been on them.

The first one was when Robert Scoble announced on Twitter that he had just lost his iPhone in a cab and the basic reaction was that this would be a good reason to buy the 3G iPhone when it comes out. Granted he didn’t have any valuable data on the phone but wait a second what about the cost of all this. Are we really made that much of money that we can brush off the loss of a $400.00 or $500.00 phone without even a single swear word and then turn around and spend another $200.00 (not counting AT&T bloodsucking) to replace it.

Then this morning we have Fred Wilson writing on his blog how he had lost his mobile phone while biking through Paris and while he pointed out that as a phone it was useless in Europe it could still be used with WiFi connections. While he was worried because some-one might end up being able to post to his blog or impersonate him on Twitter he wasn’t sure if his various social media accounts could be de-activated. In short his on-line identity could be stolen and there was basically nothing he could do about it.

Granted he raised the point that social media – especially those accessible via mobile platforms – need to provide a way to de-activate accounts I was left with a feeling that his next stop would be to pick up a new phone, load it up again with his social media applications and be on his way.

Both these examples; and these are just the one’s we hear about, for me are a prime example of why mobile phones can be a very dangerous platform to entrust our personal data on. When our wallets get stolen or lost we go ballistic and spend time making sure credit cards get canceled and we spend time replacing all the lost information. With mobile phones though we just seem to shrug our shoulders and head to the nearest store to buy a new one.

It is this kind of attitude that is making stolen mobile phones such a lucrative market and it will only become more so as we start carrying more and more of our lives in them.

Conversation Tags: security, mobile phones, theft

While the libertarians among us might have hoped that Congress would have had the backbone needed to hold telecoms accountable through the courts for their spying on Americans without court orders the fact is Congress didn’t. The pessimists among us though never believed for a second that Congress wouldn’t toe the line and grant amnesty to the telecoms.

As it turns out not only have they granted amnesty; which basically halts any lawsuits in the courts at this time, they have also expanded the spying powers granted to agencies like the NSA who use the telecoms to carry out their spy programs. As Ryan Singel from Threat Level writes in a post today

The bill allows the NSA to order phone companies, ISPs, and online service providers to turn over all communications that have one foreigner as a party to the conversation. If any Americans are party to the conversation, the government is supposed to mask their names, but these minimization procedures are easily overridden. The longstanding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required specific court orders to wiretap phone and internet lines inside the United States, but did not regulate spying conducted on non-U.S. soil.

Under the so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008,  the government would need court order to wiretap an American overseas, regardless of where the tap was. Under the current regime, targeted taps aimed at Americans overseas requires the sign-off of the Attorney General.

In addition Michael Masnick from Techdirt adds

However, under this new law, Congress has basically given the President (who ordered the wiretaps in the first place, and doesn’t want these trials to go forward since they may reveal that he broke the law too) "get out of jail free" cards he can hand to each telco, saying that since he told them that the wiretaps were legal, the lawsuits no longer can proceed. Basically, this puts the President above the law, lets him avoid trials that might prove that his activities broke the law and to reward telcos who broke the law at his command.

Even worse, the bill basically grants the administration the right to keep on spying without getting warrants. Intelligence agencies will be able to demand various communications providers hand over communications without court approval and without naming the target, so long as they claim that the communications are "reasonably believed to involve a non-American who is outside the country." Seems rather wide open for abuse doesn’t it?

So while we argue about the merits of social media, comment fragmentation and all those other wonderful warm and fuzzy precepts upon we dream of a new world of openness and transparency, it is being made a joke of by the real power in our society. The power that comes from controlling the money and access to information.

It is things like this that in effect make a joke out a free and equal society that is the underlying tenet for much of what Web 2.0 and its advocates stand for. We can stand on our electronic pulpits or type our 140 characters espousing social change and involvement by all when in fact the very politicians we claim to believe in this social media change end up showing their true colors.

When things like this happen here in the US and then in Canada we see the obvious uprising by the people against a law heavily influenced by foreign interests being ignored by those in power this shows exactly how little effect things like social media really has. IT shows how much of a dream world we are living in.

No sooner than the wave of record setting downloads are drawing to a close word is that a critical exploit has been discovered in Firefox 3. As being reported by c|net news security blog D3F3NS3 1N D3PTH (isn’t that such a cute name for a blog <gag>) the vulnerability was originally reported by Tipping Point’s Zero Day Imitative and rates the flaw as critical.

Nothing is being said about the vulnerability at this point so that the Firefox team has a chance to confirm (or deny) the problem and issue a fix for it. From the c|net post

Although the Zero Day Initiative team does not offer specifics until the vendor has a chance to patch it, the blog post did say this vulnerability, which also affects Firefox 2, requires user interaction and could result in an attacker executing arbitrary code.

Mozilla is reported to be working on a fix.

I wonder if this will get Mozilla another entry in the book of records as the quickest vulnerability report for a product immediately following it setting a download record.

Conversation Tags: Firefox 3, security, zero day

Well Sophos has put together this video on their blog that utilize Google Earth to show that happens within the blink of an eye as you click that link.

Conversation Tags: Sophos, Britney Spears, malware

Through their wannabe police proxies otherwise known as the RIAA and MPAA the entertainment industry has; and continues to strong arm influence governments around the world. However not happy with this the industry is now looking to local governments on a state by state level. As reported by David Kravets on the Threat Level blog the MPAA and RIAA has been heavily involved with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in crafting new local laws that will declare music and video piracy as a public nuisance.

As innocent as that might sound that classification; which also includes drugs, gangs, prostitution and gambling, in fact allows them a very large leeway in how these so-called evil perpetrators are dealt with. From the Treat Level blog:

In an ordinance just adopted, the five-member board is declaring that piracy “substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county’s citizens, its businesses and its visitors.”

The regulation was crafted at the urging of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

The county retains the right to shutter a property for up to a year for violating ordinance 13.90.010 and also gives local authorities the right to bring a civil action to “temporarily restrain, preliminarily enjoin, and/or permanently enjoin the person or persons intentionally conducting, or knowingly maintaining or permitting the public nuisance from further conducting, maintaining, or permitting such a public nuisance.”

Property owners who knowingly permit such activity can also be dinged $1,000 for each counterfeited work produced on the property.

Now tell me that this sits right with the average citizen. To bad we’re all so wrapped up in nonsense like Web 2.0 and don’t seem to care one bit as more and more of our liberties and rights are being corrupted by industries that are more interested in their bottom line than anything else.

Conversation Tags: piracy, RIAA, MPAA, Los Angeles

One would have to think that anyone conducting illegal activities; and who are net savvy as we are being told that the bad guys DHS is after is, that the last thing they would be doing is carrying a laptop with a hard drive full of incriminating information. After all with the proliferation of in the cloud data storage what would stop these bad guys from saving it all to the cloud - wiping their machines - cross the border - download their data.

As for cell phone perhaps someone should tell the DHS about the pay as you go mobile solutions. To think that anyone planning on blowing anything up would cross any border with a cell phone full of phone numbers of their evil buddies in far away lands is ludicrous.

I’m not suggesting that border security is anything short of useless in regards to stopping dedicated bad people wishing to cause destruction and mayhem but the idea that examining and / or seizing electronic devices is going to anything more than find some pirated music and some questionable holiday pictures is dreaming. Instead they will have unfettered access to personal data just because they don’t like your name or you might have a name that sounds similar to one on a list some where - and we all know how well that is working out.

As the EFF said in their press release on the situation

“Our computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices hold a vast amount of personal information like financial data, health histories, and personal emails and letters,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “In a free country, the government cannot have unlimited power to read, seize, and store this information without any oversight.”

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has refused to release its policies and procedures for conducting these intrusive searches. EFF and the Asian Law Caucus have filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security to obtain the information through the Freedom of Information Act.

“Your privacy could be at risk even if you don’t travel yourself. Your financial institution, your insurer, and other enterprises hold extensive personal data about you and your family,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. “If agents of those groups travel internationally, your information could be exposed to officials at the border or potentially copied and stored in government databases. Americans should know how and why electronic data is seized and kept by the government, and who is able to access it at the border and in the years afterwards.”

Yup .. I can see this working out really well - not.

Conversation Tags: security, search and seizure, DHS, EFF

The argument that was used was that these online storage sites which are password protected and encrypted are no different than when you walk into a bank and sign up for a safety deposit box

MP3tunes strongly objected to EMI’s request, because it was both an invasion of user’s personal storage, and because it would create a huge technical and financial burden, with more than 300 terabytes of files in personal Lockers. Files are not MP3tunes’ possessions any more than the contents of a safety deposit box are owned by the bank that houses them. The storage provided by MP3tunes is the user’s own space. A Locker is empty when someone opens an account and that customer decides what files are placed into their Locker. All files are stored at the request of the user. People who choose to utilize remote storage should be guaranteed the same level of privacy they have for the files stored on their local hard disk.

This argument apparently worked because the New York judge hearing the case has turned down the request by EMI for MP3Tunes.com to turn over all the information. While this was a nice win to see and even though Michael Robertson’s (owner of MP3Tunes.com) statement that .. "At stake is personal ownership and privacy in the digital era – both issues worth fighting for." strikes me more of good PR I think the sentiment behind it is valid.

Conversation Tags: online storage, mp3, copyright, EMI, RIAA, court decision