] Privacy Implications of Magstripes
]
] Pull out your wallet. How many cards have magstripes? Do
] you know what's on them? Would you be surprised to find
] your Social Security Number, or your Mother's and
] Father's name? What about flight information, or medical
] data, or even passwords and PIN numbers? And would you be
] surprised to learn I can get all that information in less
] than a second?
]
] First we will discuss what magstripes are, and how they
] work. Then we'll talk about easy ways to read this
] information, and demo scan some cards from the audience.
] We'll discuss some of the worst offenders of private
] information, and steps to protect your privacy. Next, we
] look at magstripe projects you can do (such as a Unix PAM
] plugin), and ways to remove information from magstripes.
] We will briefly touch on smart cards and RFIDs, and the
] security/privacy issues involved with both.

Acidus speaking at ToorCon 2004

] Bush said about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed personnel
] would move from overseas to posts in the United States
] over the next decade.
]
] "Our service members will have more time on the home
] front," Bush said, outlining his plans in a speech before
] a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
]
] Bush said it makes no sense to continue an armed posture
] that was forged during the cold war, when the Soviet
] Union represented the nation's biggest threat. Terrorism,
] he said, is now the chief threat.
]
] He said the plan had been in the works for three years,
] and U.S. allies and Congress were consulted on it.
]
] The nation's commander in chief predicted the plan would
] result in stronger alliances and reduce the stress on
] U.S. troops and their families.
] ]
] Democrats criticized the move. In a statement released by
] the Democratic National Committee, retired Gen. Wesley
] Clark, a former presidential candidate, said the
] redeployment from Europe and Asia would "significantly
] undermine U.S. national security."
]
] "This ill-conceived move and its timing seem politically
] motivated rather than designed to strengthen our national
] security," Clark said.

This is full of so many contradictions, I don't know where to start. Someone explain to me how removing most of the 119,000 troops from NATO bases in Europe will result in "stronger alliances?" Don't we have senators fighting each other every year over military base closures, because they cause such economic drain? I bet the Germans are just going to love flying a battalion of troops to New Mexico for wargames. Now I'm not saying in this modern world we need 119,000 troops in Europe, but to claim this is anything other than a political move is total crap.

Further, what will these troops be used for? Because it makes "no sense" to keep them in Europe now that the Cold is over, and we must bring them to the US to fight the "chief threat," Terrorism.

Again, complete bullshit! I challenge someone to defend how grunt from the infantry is going to fight terrorsim. He isn't crunching intelligence data! Further, he is completely restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act from acting in any type of law enforcement capacity. So, yes, after a city is attacked, these troops, can, after a freaking act of Congress, help pick up the bodies.

This is shamefully political.

Bush: Moving Troops home to fight terrorism?

As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war.

And tonight, we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes and ears to the truth, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.

A couple quotes from Kerry's speech that ring true.

Reason for war

] On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest
] Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my
] husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14
] Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20
] and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight
] has caused me to question whether the United States of
] America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of
] every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its
] citizens from terrorist threats.

I'm always extra observant these days when I get on a plane. I size people up. I assess them. I've never seen anything that ended up bothering me. This person did. This is your worst nightmare airplane story.

By Jeremy's Gold Star system I'm giving this story a 1/2 gold star. This is simply the scariest thing I've read in 3 years. Don't read this if you're not prepared. Its fucked up.

Its also important. You're reading about this because of the blogosphere. I imagine that this will get wide coverage online and the mainstream press will pick it up, like the Trent Lott thing. If this is what it claims to be its as important as a successful attack. People need and want to know that things like this are going down. DHS and the airline industry would rather they didn't, for various reasons, not all of which are bad ones.

Is it what it claims to be? Thats primarily the reason why it will be important. Its impossible to know how accurate this account is until someone from the Government actually makes a statement on it. That won't happen until a large number of people are talking about it.

This story is also seriously flawed, hence the 1/2 star. Once the facts are presented, the not so facts are presented. Ann Coultier is quoted. The lack of racial profiling is questioned. Unfortunately the fact that those ideas are tagged onto this information will cloud the value of it. People on the left will think twice about blogging it or considering it. People on the right will be drawn into its conclusions by its information.

The fact is that its properly called Islamic Extremeism, not Arab Extremeism, and there is a very good reason for that, only part of which is the fact that not all Arabs are Muslim. The critical issue from a security standpoint is that if you focus all your investigative efforts on Arabs you will find an airplane full of guys from the Sudan rammed right up your ass, and you cannot tell the difference between guys from the Sudan and guys from Atlanta based on what they look like.

Those that argue for a crackdown on Arabs are not just racist, they're stupid. And not only because they're missing part of the puzzle, but also because whats good for the goose is good for the gander, and they never seem to consider that, even in the context of bombings by radical fundamentalist Christians.

This does not imply that 15 Arabs on a plane acting sketchy as all hell is not a something you ought to investigate. Clearly, in this case, if the story is true, it was investigated. To what end, who knows. I seriously doubt that if there was something substantive going on here that the agents would have just let these guys go and forgotten about it. I also seriously doubt that they would have let this woman know what they did when she called. But its irrelevant.

Assuming this information is accurate, I'll say I no longer find jokes about DHS's alert system so funny.

(Of course, its worth reading this from the other direction. Maybe it was just a group of guys from Detroit rolling down to do a show. Lots of Middle Eastern people in Detroit. Maybe they had a lot to drink and all needed to hit the bathroom. Maybe they wanted to chat in the hallways because they weren't sitting near eachother. But there was enough going on here to spook the security forces. Her fears were not totally unreasonable.)

Terror in the Skies, Again? - WomensWallStreet ***1/2 Gold Star***

] The NAACP received a letter from the White House three
] weeks ago declining the invitation because of scheduling
] conflicts and thanking them for understanding.
]
] The letter was signed by presidential scheduler Melissa
] Bennett.

I hope to God the African-American voters don't turn the other cheek.

I like the last paragraph best:

"White House spokesman Jim Morrell said Wednesday that the president has spoken about "equal opportunity and equal rights for all Americans" in many public places."

i.e. words /= actions

CNN.com - Bush declines NAACP invitation - Jul 8, 2004

The 5th Hope Hacking Conference is this Weekend in NYC. Many Memestreamers will be there, include Decius, Rattle, Adaddon, myself, Romanpoet, and possbily more. You can see the talks streamed from the Con on the website the-5th-hope.com.

Stripe Snoop at SourceForge has gone live! Also, I have a working port to Linux, which I will be uploading soon, as well as the first public version to have the backend database!

Check it out.

http://stripesnoop.sourceforge.net/

Classic. Placard from a protest in Ireland

Somewhere in Texas...

] I'm off on this tangent because I'm enraged by the
] numerous attempts at verbose, pseudoliterary, "nuanced"
] criticism of Moore this week by the learned priests of
] our business. (And no, I'm not overlooking this
] newspaper.) Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible
] to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the
] facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he
] wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of
] us had any balls at all.
]
] If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush
] press conference last year and shouted, "Bullshit!" it
] might have made a difference.
]
] If even one network, instead of cheerily re-broadcasting
] Pentagon-generated aerial bomb footage, had risked its
] access to the government by saying to the Bush
] administration, "We're not covering the war unless we can
] shoot anything we want, without restrictions," that might
] have made a difference. It might have made this war look
] like what it is%u2014pointless death and carnage that
] would have scared away every advertiser in the
] country%u2014rather than a big fucking football game that
] you can sell Coke and Pepsi and Scott's Fertilizer to.
]
] Where are the articles about the cowardice of those
] people? Hitchens in his piece accuses Moore of errors by
] omission: How come he isn't writing about the CNN
] producers who every day show us gung-ho Army desert rats
] instead of legless malcontents in the early stages of a
] lifelong morphine addiction?
]
] Yeah, well, we don't write about those people, because
] they're just doing their jobs, whatever that means. For
] some reason, we in the media can forgive that. We just
] can't forgive it when someone does our jobs for us. Say
] what you want about Moore, but he picked himself up and
] did something, something approximating the role
] journalism is supposed to play. The rest of us%u2014let's
] face it%u2014are just souped-up shoe salesmen with lit
] degrees. Who should shut their mouths in the presence of
] real people. o

NYPress: SHOVELING COAL FOR SATAN: Christopher Hitchens collects check from Microsoft, calls Moore a coward.

I just over heard a 4th year CS major at Tech ask another 4th year CS major: "Whats a DLL?"

The 2nd one said "I don't know."

I piped up across row saying "Its a library of code that you can use, normally supplied by Microsoft."

The 1st says "... ... OH! So its like a Class File! In Java"

Yes. This person was a 4th Year CS major, who has a 3.4.