For some reason, the government did not appear to make the argument invited by the Supreme Court by its rulings in the FedEx and dog-sniff cases. The government could have argued that -- if the EnCase scan for a particular MD5 hash matches -- that the search is constitutionally permissible without a warrant because it revealed nothing except the existence of contraband. And, because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in contraband, the government might argue, a search which only reveals the existence of contraband invades no legitimate privacy right.

In the Crist case, however, the court never addressed that critical issue, because it never had to. The government merely argued that an automated search was no search at all.

This unanswered question -- whether a scan of hash values looking for contraband is a permissible search -- is really the rub.

If the government may conduct warrantless searches as long as they only reveal the presence of contraband, then they could lawfully put automated sniffers on any computer, searching for the presence of files for which the MD5 hash matched that of contraband. While the software categorizing the files might be considered to be conducting a search -- and I think it is -- the contents of this search are not revealed unless the program believes it is contraband.

Acidus:

... ... How did I not see this earlier? Pretty sure this is the same guy writing about how data stored "in the cloud" can be legally searched without a warrant because you have involved a 3rd party who can consent to the search.

And don't think about kiddie porn. Think about the MPAA.

This is a HUGE question that will be one of the defining civil liberties battles of the next decade. I wrote about this case here.

The bottom line becomes, any technology that we can develop to collect information about crimes is A-OK so long as it never provides any information to a human being unless an actual crime has been committed...

Eventually in the distant future, you reach a point... where you've replaced your human police officers with robots... These robots are artificially intelligent and never report the results of their investigations to humans unless a crime has been committed.

Under this analysis I cannot see how the Constitution would prohibit these robots from doing all of the tyrannical things that the 4th amendment was intended to prevent the police from doing, and I don't see how this state of affairs would be materially different from not having any 4th amendment at all.

Therefore, if the 4th amendment is to have any meaning at all, there must be some reason that this kind of automated search is not reasonable.

Scalia offered the following in reference to Caballes: "This is not a new technology. This is a dog." I find that explanation extremely unsatisfying.

Its not a 'Search.' Its just a search.

What's going to happen in the next five years or so that will catch most of the rest of us by surprise, but not you?

I think this is an interesting question although the answers in the thread aren't fantastic.

I predict that a smartphone worm will temporarily disable wireless voice services.

I also predict that your account on some social networking sites will be verified against a government database, most likely the DMV. This practice might be tried in another country before it happens here. Most likely the UK.

The next 5 years...

President Bush at Summercon

Corey Menscher, an ITP student, has designed a kick sensor which monitors his pregnant wife's belly, and generates a fetal tweet whenever the baby kicks.

The thing seems to have a bug:

Wow I'm being very active! I kicked Mommy 1766 times at 11:59AM on Thu, Dec 11!

Regardless its another interesting use of twitter. Implementation details here:

The Kickbee is a wearable device made of a stretchable band and embedded electronics and sensors. Piezo sensors are attached directly to the band, and transmit voltages when movement underneath is detected. An Arduino Mini transmits the signals to an accompanying Java application wirelessly via Bluetooth.

The Java application receives the sensor values and analyzes them. When a kick event is detected, a Twitter message is posted via the Twitter API.

Youngest Twitterer EVAR? - Boing Boing

Howard Husock has an exercise in cognitive dissonance in today’s NYT Op-Ed pages titled Housing Goals We Can’t Afford, and it begins:

“The national wave of home foreclosures, many concentrated in lower-income and minority neighborhoods, has created a strong temptation to find the villains responsible.”

What can you say about an Op-Ed whose very first sentence is a giant pile of steaming bullshit? That statement is demonstrably false. As the prior post on foreclosures shows, the concentration is mostly middle class and upper middle class white suburban neighborhoods.

More CRA Idiocy | The Big Picture

Connects via WiFi to your online bank account, and donates YOUR real money to an organization you HATE when you decide to snooze!

Wow! You can actually be threatened by a computer!

ThinkGeek :: SnūzNLūz - Wifi Donation Alarm Clock

Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods.

hahahahahahahaha

From the BoingBoing thread: I tried Linux once during college but I swear, I never compiled the source code!

Austinist: AISD Teacher Throws Fit Over Student's Linux CD

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s indication that he will use “quantitative easing” to prevent deflation points to a stock market rally that may last for the next two years, Napier said. With quantitative easing, a tool pioneered by the Bank of Japan, central banks can stimulate inflation by printing money and flooding the market with cash in order to encourage consumers to spend.

The government’s efforts will eventually fail as ballooning government debt devalues the dollar, causes investors to flee U.S. assets and takes the S&P 500 to its eventual bottom in 2014, Napier said.

“Bear markets always end for exactly the same reason, and that is the market begins to price in deflation,” he said. “The results are always horrific.”

Bloomberg.com: Bottom in 2014?

Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Some Other Day

YouTube - Nine Inch Nails - Down In It

The UK's Internet Censorship group backs down. Unfortunately, the complicated issues that are raised by the existence of this infrastructure and the way that it is managed are not resolved by the fact that this particular controversy is over, and will inevitably rear their head again.

The IWF on Tuesday said that, "in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove the webpage from our list."

AFAIK, no law about images like this makes that sort of distinction.

"IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect," the group said in a statement

Censorship Group Removes Wikipedia Blacklisting | Threat Level from Wired.com