By the late 19th century, Christmas in Manhattan was an excuse for the rabble to go wilding from door to door in upper-class neighborhoods, demanding booze and cash from terrified householders in exchange for an off-key (and sometimes off-color) yuletide song. In desperation, Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore, and other members of New York's cultural elite invented Santa Claus---and Christmas as we know it---as a means of domesticating the drunken revels of the dangerous classes. Their bourgeois myth was designed to channel lumpen unrest into a more acceptable outlet: a domestic ritual consecrated to home, hearth, and conspicuous consumption.

Mark Dery on Christmas

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced the launch of a virtual job fair at www.dhs.gov/cyberjobfair to recruit cybersecurity experts—capitalizing on DHS’ recently acquired authority to recruit and hire up to 1,000 cybersecurity professionals across the Department over the next three years.

Through the virtual job fair, DHS is looking for applicants with experience in cyber risk and strategic analysis; malware/vulnerability analysis; incident response; exercise facilitation and management; vulnerability detection and assessment; intelligence analysis; and cyber-related infrastructure interdependency analysis.

DHS: Secretary Napolitano Announces Virtual Job Fair to Expand Cyber Workforce

Chris Klaus founded Intenet Security Systems in 1994, while he was a sophomore at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  Chris’s product, the Internet Scanner, offered well being to companies connecting to the internet as the world wide web emerged, and it did so under a freemium model.  Beginning as a side project in his dorm room where $1,000 checks started showing up, Chris asked a professor where he could find a good lawyer for his business, and that lawyer introduced him to Tom Noonan.  Chris dropped out of Tech to pursue the business full time, John Imlay and Sig Mosely invested, and Internet Security Systems grew rapidly in an emerging market.  ISS’s rapid growth culminated in its initial public offering on NASDAQ in march of 1998 and in an acquisition by IBM for $1.3 billion in October, 2006.

Very interesting!

Atlanta's Security Cluster: Spotlight on ISS

The Obama administration is trying to ease Canadians' concerns that by crossing the U.S. border they risk their right to privacy and the abandonment of their information to Big Brother databases.

"I know there's this myth that the United States is one big database. There absolutely is the myth - and that is not the case," Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in an interview during a recent visit to Ottawa.

Nah, its a bunch of big databases, but its ok, they're all interconnected.

However, Canadians were reminded that U.S. border searches can be intrusive last week when, only hours after Ms. Callahan spoke in Ottawa, Toronto science fiction writer Peter Watts was stopped as he tried to leave the U.S. He later complained he was assaulted and arrested when he tried to ask border officers why they were searching his car.

Apparently it was a rather serious altercation - Watts has been charged with assault.

Mr. Watts got his possessions back Saturday, except for a computer and flash drive, which he will get back later - and Chief Smith insisted that while border officers can look through such equipment for evidence of crimes, they didn't copy the information. "We're not allowed to keep the information off of anybody's personal computer or flash drive," he said. "We can look at it, but we can't maintain it."

Mr. Watts said in an interview yesterday that what happened to him was more akin to police brutality than Big Brother information gathering. "But I have to admit there is this crawly feeling - they now have access to all my financial data, and more importantly, all my e-mails."

According to DHS, the US only performed an in depth search of 40 laptops between October 1, 2008 and May 5, 2009. So, about 80 laptops a year. Out of millions of travelers, this science fiction author's laptop was selected to be one of the 80 that are given an in depth search? Why? Because there is no standard of suspicion required for seizure of laptops at the border, DHS doesn't need to have a reason.

This is a perfect example of why we must change the law to require reasonable suspicion for in depth laptop searches. People don't like being searched. People who are randomly selected at the border for search are occasionally going to be indignant about it. Generally speaking, getting in a argument with a police officer is a stupid thing to do, but people do it. Its human nature. Its also human nature for authority figures to get aggressive with people who question them.

It may be the case that CBP has a reason to be suspicious of Peter Watts. Something he said or did or maybe even the nature... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Search of Peter Watts demonstrates why more rules are needed for border searches.

Structures found within technology, the sciences, nature and architecture provide the internal organization and logic for my paintings. Through successive layers I inset intricate geometries within what seems to be sinking archipelagos and dissolving perspectival systems, which are themselves the residue left over from past layers. In this way spaces emerge, transform and then decay, always leaving a trace in the final painting. A self-imposed rule dictates that every layer remain partially visible, and to this end I use processes where all strata are interwoven through a series of cancellations and resurrections. I look for moments of intensity where the cross-communication of dissimilar patterns form a moiré effect in the mind that can lead to thinking visually in interpenetrating information fields- the main subject of my work.

Sarah Walker :: SignalScape

flynn23 wrote:
The problem is not whether people can opt out or not. At some point, opting out will make you a second class citizen, or even a criminal in some places, because having data about you will be required to make certain transactions or participate in basic services.

I should be clear - what I was discussing at WWW2007 wasn't about providing people with a way to opt out of services - it was about providing a way for people to opt out of data collection while still using the services...

Basically - these services need to collect data in order to do business. This causes some social problems, leading people to collectively push for log/data destruction (at least in the EU). What can these services do?

They can empower their users to see what is stored about them and control it themselves. This can work for two reasons:

1. These services don't need to know everything about me in order to do what they do. They can get by on some information. If I have the ability to control what they are storing, I can remove anything sensitive and let them have the rest of the information.

2. People who complain about the privacy impact can be shunted at the dashboard, where they can opt out of some or all the data collection while still using the service - its an answer that will satisfy a significant number of critics.

Basically, its a middle ground position that allows the services to operate and people to use them without the same privacy impacts and without a broad scaling back of the information the services have access to.

So far, in the US, the political will to reign in data collection by these services has been too weak to make this option attractive, but its possible, neh likely, that Canada and the EU will get there first as their privacy regulations are far more sophisticated then our own.

In fact, what Google has done with Dashboard is not nearly this sophisticated. A huge let down after reading the press coverage.

RE: Fuck You Eric Schmidt

My post about Google Dashboard quoted this news report:

Dashboard let me review my Web searches going back to 2006. Long-forgotten queries about airline tickets, books and magazine articles, a new clarinet for my daughter - they’re all still there.

When I posted this I hadn't logged in yet - and in fact Dashboard doesn't do that. Your search history comes from Google History which has been around for a while, but only works if you search while logged in. When you access Google History Google goads you to download a toolbar so they can watch your web surfing all the time, and not just when you are accessing one of their sites.

Are you better off not having a Google Account - and thus not having a Google History?

Either way, they know, they have the data, but if you tie your searches to your account, they know even more, but in exchange you get to know something too.

Why do I feel like I'm dealing with a drug dealer?

(Worse, if you remove things from "Google History" they don't actually get removed from Google's logs - only from the history service.)

Google Dashboard isn't as cool as I thought.

Acidus wrote:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place,"

... ...

This was an enormously stupid and hypocritical thing for him to have said, particularly in light of the CNET incident, and it will be requoted and requoted for years to come.

However, its worth noting that Google recently created a Dashboard that allows users to control what information is collected about them. A snippet from this news report:

Dashboard let me review my Web searches going back to 2006. Long-forgotten queries about airline tickets, books and magazine articles, a new clarinet for my daughter - they’re all still there.

I recommended this when I spoke on the subject of privacy at WWW2007. But its really an extension of Greg Conti's research, in which he developed tools that allow users to see what information Google is collecting. Conti is quoted in that news article.

It doesn't really solve the problem - the privacy problem is a collective problem and this is an individual solution. Its more a negotiating position if you will. You insist that you need all this information in order to operate these services - can you at least empower me to see what you've collected and to opt out? On a certain level it provides Google with a way of shunting uncomfortable questions about privacy by allowing concerned people to opt out as it applies to them personally. However, we will face the broader social implications of the privacy problems posed by these systems regardless of whether or not we individually opt out.

Nevertheless, I'm glad that Google did this. Its an important step. It could help raise people's awareness.

More on the subject here.

RE: Fuck You Eric Schmidt

Bsecure is a net nanny filter provider. They proudly boast on their website that they are endorsed by the American Family Association, as well as Joe Gibbs and the National Rifle Association.

Bsecure has placed MemeStreams on a number of their filter lists. The description of some of these lists, as applied to MemeStreams, is simply defamatory. There is no other reasonable description. Here are the filter lists.

The first one is not a big deal.

Web Logs

Websites which feature commentary and articles written a long or journal format, generally called blogs. These blogs can be from personal or non-commercial sources.

The next one gets a little fuzzy.

Hacking

Websites which promote unlawful or questionable tools to gain access to software or hardware, communications equipment, or passwords. This category includes sites that discuss password generation, compiled binaries, hacking tools, or software piracy.

We talk about hacking and security here frequently. I think the people here usually stop short of "promoting... unlawful tools to gain access..." but TI seems to have gotten confused about that...

The next category cuts even closer to the line:

Unsavory/Dubious:

Websites which contain material of a questionable legal or ethical nature. This category includes sites that promote or distribute products, information, or devices whose use may be deemed unethical or illegal.

In order to read that paragraph in such a way that you could fairly apply it to this site you'd have to parse it like a piece of legislation. Clearly its unfair when considered in totality.

Here is where the line gets crossed.

Malicious Code/Spyware/Viruses

Websites which may promote destructive or harmful computer code, or software intended to monitor user behavior without the user's knowledge and consent. This category applies to instruction, message board, or download sites that offer this material.

MemeStreams has never distributed Malicious Code, Spyware, or Viruses. But they don't stop there. The accusations keep coming:

Criminal Skills:

Websites which promote illegal or criminal activity such as credit card theft, illegal surveillance, and murder.

Credit card theft, illegal surveillance, and murder!?@? What the fuck are these people talking about?

Bsecure claims that sometimes they make "mistakes" when categorizing websites. Perhaps these are "mistakes?" I don't think so. It turns out that lots of prominent security sites such as seclists.org and NT Bug Traq are placed in the exact same categories (promoting murder and the like). However, Security Focus, a website which distributes every known exploit for every known computer security vulnerability, has a clean bill of health and two thumbs up from Bsecure.

Why is Memestreams a "criminal site" and Security Focus is not? Well, there is one obvious difference between us. The later is owned by a public company with a 14 billion dollar market capitalization, so they are in a better position than we are to file defamation suits. Could that have some baring on their categorization?

I dunno. But one thing is for sure, although I generally support the right to bare arms, I can't support a political group who endorsed somebody who claims that my website promotes credit card theft, illegal surveillance, and murder. I can't wait for the next fool who asks me what I think of the NRA!

The last Mortgage Bankers Association report estimates that the total number of loans in some sort of delinquency, default, or foreclosure status to be about 8.2 million, or 14.41% of all loans. If the true number of Imminently at-risk loans is somewhere between 13 and 15 million, the default and foreclosure crisis is about 60% over.

Millions More At-Risk of Default Than Most Think | The Big Picture