SearchDataCenter.com Editorial Blog: Sun Blackbox Dos and Don'ts
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:51 am EDT, Oct 27, 2006
DO place you Sun Blackbox in your front yard on cement blocks DO NOT place your Sun Blackbox near the Superdome DO appear trendy and decorate the side with 7EEt speak phrases like "My Blackbox is the suxx00r!" DO NOT decorate the sides with phrases like "steal me" DO engage in team building exercises and allow stressed out administrators access to a crane so they can play "Sun Blackbox Tetris" DO NOT use vodka instead of water to cool the servers DO have the occasional rave and install a working wet bar DO NOT place Sun Blackboxes on the cliff edges or very steep hills. DO buy a thousand units if you are the U.S. Government and then leave them unlocked. Laptop theft is so pass� DO NOT enter your Sun Blackbox in a tractor pull
Yeah, that's about the only part worth reading on the site.
Election 2006: Senate and House Races Updated Daily
Topic: Politics and Law
12:20 am EDT, Oct 12, 2006
The dude gets points for putting his web server on port 2006. The dude does not get points for using a light blue tint to indicate "no senate race."
Update: Everyone keeps complaining about this post. On the LCD screen on my Dell Laptop his light blue and his grey look very similar, and when I first saw the map it looked very Democratic for about 10 seconds, and then it occured to me that they don't have Senate races in every state every year. I've looked at this page on other monitors now and it looks different. LCDs can do odd things with color, as anyone who has ever designed a website will attest.
Following up on our previous brief discussion, I'm very curious what would happen if the laptop was seized due to my refusal to allow the search.
The forensic team will recognize immediately that my entire home directory is encrypted with FileVault. Assuming FV is secure (i don't really know), what're they gonna do about it?
As you say, absent some law penalizing me for non-compliance, seems like they're SOL.
Have you seen anything in your reading that deals with this subject?
Protecting our Perimeter: Border Searches under the 4th Amendment
Topic: Civil Liberties
12:52 am EDT, Aug 1, 2006
A suspicionless physical or x-ray search at the border of an inanimate object such as a person’s luggage or vehicle is generally viewed as reasonable because it does not pose the same degree of intrusiveness as searches of the human body. Furthermore, more intrusive or destructive border searches of such inanimate objects also may not require “reasonable suspicion.” In United States v. Flores-Montano, the Supreme Court held that the dismantling, removal, and reassembly of a vehicle’s fuel tank at the border was justified by the United States’ paramount interest in protecting itself and that it did not require reasonable suspicion. The Court found that the dignity and privacy interests that require reasonable suspicion for highly intrusive searches of the person did not apply to vehicles being examined at the border.
So, this article has lots of information about border searches. There is an argument that if you can completely dismantle a fuel tank at a border and put it back together, you ought to be able to dismantle a computer. However, I think there is also a counter argument, as the contents of a laptop are broad and extremely personal in nature and far more intrusive then searches of other inanimate objects. I think there is room for an amicus brief or even a court case arguing that you cannot search a laptop at a border unless you have reasonable suspicion.
Unfortunately, the bar for reasonable suspicion (which is all the suspicion needed for the "chemical enema" Acidus referenced in his post) seems to be so low that its basically a meaningless standard.
In United States v. Forbicetta, the court found reasonable suspicion to exist where Customs officials acted on the following objective facts: (1) the suspect arrived from Bogota, Colombia, (2) was traveling alone, (3) had only one suitcase and no items requiring Customs inspection, (4) was young, clean-looking, and attractive, and (5) was wearing a loose-fitting dress.
What a bunch of bullshit. Sounds like everyman (or everywoman as the case may be).
So, if there is anything that can be done here, its thin, thin, thin...
The routine border search of Romm’s laptop was reasonable, regardless whether Romm obtained foreign contraband in Canada or was under “official restraint.”
Finally, and for the first time in his reply brief, Romm argues the search of his laptop was too intrusive on his First Amendment interests to qualify as a “routine” border search. See generally Okafor, 285 F.3d at 846 (noting the difference between routine and non-routine searches). We decline to consider this issue here because “arguments not raised by a party in its opening brief are deemed waived.” See Smith v. Marsh, 194 F.3d 1045, 1052 (9th Cir. 1999). Therefore, evaluating the border search of Romm’s laptop solely as a routine search, we hold the district court correctly denied Romm’s motion to suppress.
Here the 9th blows right past the question of whether laptop searches are "routine." They assume it is. Romm's lawyers raise some questions about that, and the 9th refuses to consider them for a technical reason. They are underestimating the implications of their decision.
Since the founding of our Republic, Congress has granted the Executive plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border, without probable cause or a warrant, in order to regulate the collection of duties and to prevent the introduction of contraband into this country.
In this case a standard of suspicion is set before border guards can detain someone for hours hoping their bowel movements might produce cocaine balloons. That standard is very low, but there is a standard. It cannot be done at random. The question is whether a search of a laptop's contents is "routine" or whether it is special. Note Brennan and Marshall's dissent, which is much more along the lines of my thinking then the majority.
I usually keep two 20" screens side by side on my desk, so I can code on one and test on the other. I find I can work much faster if I can just make a change in Eclipse, and by the time I turn my head to the other screen, the tests have already run. My new laptop, however, has a 15" screen, which feels a bit cramped when I'm working away from the office. I've been using the fancy Desktop Manager by Richard Wareham, which is a very nice utility to let you keep several virtual desktops, and change between them easily.
Of course, if you're using something like Emacs or Butler, all your keys will be taken already, so you'll need to use some sort of Command-Ctrl-Shift-4 keystroke for the actual desktop switching.
Turns out, the laptop has a built-in motion sensor. Nominally, it's there to protect the internal hard drive. The basic idea is this: If the accelerometer suddenly notices that the gravitational pull of earth is no longer present, the most likely explanation is that the laptop, sensor and all, is currently accelerating at 9.81 m/s� towards said earth. In that case, it will (wisely) try to turn the hard drive off in preparation for impact.
It can, however, also be used in situations not involving lobbing the laptop across the room, fun though that may be.
SmackBook: Smack your Apple notebook to change virtual desktops
Topic: Technology
12:15 am EDT, Jun 16, 2006
Setup your apple so that smacking the side of the screen changes the virtual desktop. The link is a video showing how it works. WOW. When used with the Cube... I'm gonna get this working. I just got this working. It is badass.
Here is how to do it:
after playing with smacking my laptop around i thought it was honestly easier to use the shortcut keys that virtuedesktop has and looks just as cool.
my version for intel owners: easy and painless
download and install VirtueDesktop (which is a pretty cool app in itself) http://virtuedesktops.info/
Start the app after adding it to your Applications folder
extract smackbook to a folder, place it wherever you want on your HD (I chose applications). then extract AMSTracker, and put AMSTracker in the smackbook directory. From Terminal, navigate to the smackbook directory and run 'perl smackbook.pl &' without the quotes and command-H to hide terminal if you want. voila, you're done. smack away.
