This paper introduces the compelled cer-
ticate creation attack, in which government
agencies may compel a certicate authority to
issue false SSL certicates that can be used by
intelligence agencies to covertly intercept and
hijack individuals' secure Web-based commu-
nications. Although we do not have direct ev-
idence that this form of active surveillance is
taking place in the wild, we show how prod-
ucts already on the market are geared and mar-
keted towards this kind of use|suggesting such
attacks may occur in the future, if they are
not already occurring. Finally, we introduce
a lightweight browser add-on that detects and
thwarts such attacks.

Certified Lies: Detecting and Defeating Government Interception Attacks Against SSL

How your rights dissolve...

In the nineteenth century, the courts initially provided virtually absolute protection of papers held by the target of an investigation, first based solely on the Fifth Amendment's prohibition of compelled testimony and then, after Boyd v. United States, based on both the Fifth Amendment and the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. In the twentieth century, the Supreme Court reversed itself, eventually eviscerating both Fourth and Fifth Amendment limitations on subpoenas. But the early cases doing so all involved government attempts to regulate businesses; not a single one of them involved searches of personal papers, which these cases routinely indicated were still protected from government seizure by the Fifth Amendment (although no longer by the Fourth).

SSRN-Subpoenas and Privacy by Christopher Slobogin

If a person stores documents in her home, the government may use a subpoena to compel production of those documents.

This is a shocking position - basically the DOJ is saying here that warrants have never been required to access paper records - that computer records, regardless of where they are stored, have always been available to the police without any standard of suspicion, any warrant, any court oversight - how can that be true?!

DOJ argues that warrants have never been required for paper documents

Congress should recognize the collateral consequences to criminal law enforcement and the national security of the United States if ECPA were to provide only one means — a probable cause warrant — for compelling disclosure of all stored content. For example, in order to obtain a search warrant for a particular e-mail account, law enforcement has to establish probable cause to believe that evidence will be found in that particular account. In some cases, this link can be hard to establish.

It doesn't matter who wins the election in 2012. Either way, we loose. Our constitutional rights will continue to be eroded by people who do not understand or respect the underlying reasons that they exist and see them only as obstacles to be negotiated with and rationalized away.

Obama doesn't think he needs a warrant to read your old email

My comments:

What a terrible ruling. Flores-Montano was not a general ruling about all different kinds of property. It was specifically about GAS TANKS. Generally speaking, people have gasoline in their gas tanks. The personal privacy implications associated with searching gas tanks are minimal.

It is a MASSIVE logical leap to go from the idea that a search of a gas tank is OK to the idea that any search of any collection of personal records no matter now how invasive must also be OK. For this huge logical step to be taken with so little consideration - hardly a mention in a footnote and only because the dissent prompted it - well, these are obviously people who are rationalizing their way to a desired result rather than objectively and thoroughly considering the serious issues that they herein decide.

Shameful.

I want to add that the sort of thinking here - that "If we've etablished that its OK to search a gas tank than we must also agree that its OK to search a laptop." - is exactly the sort of logical progression that George Orwell wrote about in Animal Farm.

Appeals Court Strengthens Warrantless Searches at Border | Threat Level | Wired.com

MemeStreams had social search in 2001. Just saying...

YouTube - Introducing the +1 Button

A U.S. recruiter is hiring nuclear power workers in the United States to help Japan gain control of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been spewing radiation.

The qualifications: Skills gained in the nuclear industry, a passport, a family willing to let you go, willingness to work in a radioactive zone.

Exclusive: WANTED: U.S. workers for crippled Japan nuke plant | Reuters

A body is found. In the victim’s pants are two notes written in some sort of code. The F.B.I. is called in and concludes the man was murdered.

But the encrypted notes have the F.B.I. stumped — so stumped that this week, after years of trying to decipher them, it posted what amounted to a public request for help on its Web site.

F.B.I. Seeks Help Cracking Code in Murder Victim’s Notes - NYTimes.com

This is interesting...

Traffic has never been higher at websites that display data from radiation monitoring stations.

We list three such sites below.

One of the sites is an amateur effort anyone can participate in:

Mineralab, a Prescott, Arizona, company that sells geiger counters, maintains radiationnetwork.com, “a nationwide grass roots effort to monitor the radiation in our environment.”

The network collects data from private citizens nationwide who keep their geiger-counters running, with data uploading automatically to the website in real time.

I really want a gieger counter now. Figure they should be easy to pick up on ebay in about 6 months. :)

The EPA's own monitoring system appears to be down:

The Environmental Protection Agency’s RadNet system is designed to detect radiation from accidents like the Fukushima disaster in Japan and from foreign nuclear tests. It displays a map of the United States with monitoring stations highlighted. Click on one for a graphic representation of its data.

Last night the graphs were displaying no data—in the wake of EPA’s revelation that radiation had been detected in rainwater. Above empty frames appeared the message, in bold: “To-date, levels recorded at this monitor have been thousands of times below any conservative level of concern.”

Censorship? Consider this view: (and make sure you click through to the various source links, including about deep water horizon - especially the present dolphin kill going on in the gulf...)

The EPA has pulled 8 of its 18 radiation monitors in California, Oregon and Washington because (by implication) they are giving readings which seem too high... The EPA is considering drastically raising the amount of allowable radiation in food, water and the environment.

When things like this happen its worth asking yourself if this is one of those two times a day when the stuck clock is right.

Three Sites Where You Can Monitor U.S. Radiation Levels - Jeff McMahon - The Ingenuity of the Commons - Forbes

"Observers attributed much of [America’s] rapid technological progress to its distinctive patent system. Quite revolutionary in design at inception, the U.S. patent system came to be much admired for providing broad access to property rights in new technological knowledge. These features attracted the technologically creative, even those who lacked the capital to directly exploit their inventions.”

'First to file' is threat to job creation - The Hill's Congress Blog