Ignoring the time and cost of labor, the system cost is ridiculously low. The most expensive item in the system is the TI module, which costs around $60. All the other components, the materials for the PCBs, and the items needed for building the loop antenna, together cost at most $40-$50, giving a total cost of $100-$110.

Cool Paper. The cost of time and labor, however, should not be underestimated.

How to Build a Low-Cost, Extended-Range RFID Skimmer

Silicon Valley guru Bill Joy has a message: limit access to information and technologies that could put unprecedented power into the hands of malign individuals

Anyone got access to this?

New Scientist Premium- Interview: Bill Joy is still at it.

Many boomer parents carefully planned and fiercely protected their children, according to Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, by Neil Howe and William Strauss.
They saw their youngsters as "special," and they sheltered them. Parents outfitted their cars with Baby on Board stickers. They insisted their children wear bicycle helmets, knee pads and elbow guards. They scheduled children's every hour with organized extracurricular activities. They led the PTA and developed best-friend-like relationships with their children, says Mastrodicasa, co-author of a book on millennials.

You can rest assured that these kids won't be advocates of civil liberties.

Mommy, tell my professor he's not nice!

Were SWAT teams carefully observing the spirit of the announcement requirement by giving a vigorous knock, a full-throated announcement, and appropriate time for an occupant to answer, they'd be defeating the purpose of using paramilitary tactics to serve search warrants in the first place.

This article provides a good background on the erosion of the "knock and announce" rule and the problems (and deaths) it causes. There is a good case to be made that congressional action to limit no knock warrants might be a reasonable political response to the recent supreme court ruling (as are state efforts to limit land takings). OK, Democrats, heres your chance to do something I'd really get behind. Democrats? Hello?

No SWAT

noteworthy wrote:

By: Steven Bellovin, Columbia University; Matt Blaze, University of Pennsylvania; Ernest Brickell, Intel Corporation; Clinton Brooks, NSA (retired); Vinton Cerf, Google; Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems; Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems; Jon Peterson, NeuStar; John Treichler, Applied Signal Technology

June 13, 2006

For many people, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) looks like a nimble way of using a computer to make phone calls. Download the software, pick an identifier and then wherever there is an Internet connection, you can make a phone call. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense that anything that can be done with the telephone system -- such as E9111 and the graceful accommodation of wiretapping -- should be able to be done readily with VoIP as well.

Thanks for posting this. I've been doing a lot of VoIP work @ work and this is both certainly relevent and not something I've seen elsewhere. Having skimmed it, let me make two observations:

1. My interpretation of the FCC's limit of CALEA to "interconnected" and "broadband" VoIP is to say that CALEA compliance is only required if the VoIP provider is interconnected with the PSTN (which eliminiates the problems described in this paper) or the VoIP provider is also providing their customers with physical internet access (which also eliminates the problems described in this paper). My understanding is that the FBI knows tapping p2p VoIP is hard and they can't easily require it.

2. The reality that Internet CALEA compliance is hard isn't stopping people from trying. And, yes, I think that a single snmp message that configures a tap with nothing more then password protection is insanely insecure. With a designated physical tap network, with carefully crafted packet filters, this could be done, but how many times are people going to get that wrong? A lot...

Its worth noting that temporarily, these Cisco routers can't tap IPv6.

RE: Security Implications of Applying the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act to Voice over IP

Just a thought on the supposed congeniality of the "new" court: In Justice Breyer's dissent, he questions the logic of the majority opinion and refers to the majority, not as "the majority" or as "the Court," but instead, singles out the author---Justice Scalia---for its faults. On page 25 of the dissent, Breyer writes "How can Justice Scalia maintain that the evidence here---a gun and drugs seized in the home---is not the fruit of the illegal entry."

I would speculate that until Justice Alito joined the court and made his intentions clear regarding this case, following re-argument, the decision was 5-4 the other way with Justice Breyer writing for the court and Justice Scalia writing the dissent. Following the switch, the two opinions changed places, and Breyer's law clerk may simply have neglected to make this one change, which would be far more in line with protocol were it contained in the opinion of the court, which often refers to dissenters by name.

Interesting data point.

The Volokh Conspiracy - 4th amendment decision

Prosecutors said officers shouted "Police, search warrant," but readily admit that they did not knock on the door and that they waited only three to five seconds before entering and finding Hudson sitting on his couch. He was eventually convicted of drug possession.

"People have the right to answer the door in a dignified manner," Hudson's lawyer David Moran had told the high court. The justices have ruled in the past that police should announce their presence, then normally wait 15 to 20 seconds before bursting into a home.

I chose to meme this article because the headline is extremely misleading. That seems par for the course for Supreme Court reporting.

By law, when the police serve a warrant at your house, they are supposed to give you enough time to put your shirt back on before they barge in. This isn't really to protect you from the search. This is simply a matter of dignity. This headline makes it seem as if this is no longer the law, because the court refused to suppress evidence in this case. That is not at all correct.

In this case the evidence that was found was exactly what was described in the warrant. Had circumstances been different, the result might have also been different. It depends.

In any event, we're really talking about a 12-17 second difference here, not a huge period of time, this sort of entry is still illegal, and there are civil remedies that can be sought if it is employed. If they literally "catch you with your pants down" you might have a significant wad of cash coming your way, although there is some debate about that.

The bottom line is that the correctness of this decision is debatable. I won't fault you for not liking it. But, either way its not a big deal. It just so happens that this is exactly what I think about Kelo v. New London.

Kelo is debatable, but its not a big deal. However, the right wing has engaged in a highly organized campaign of grossly mischaracterizing the scope of the decision in order to promote the political idea that the court system is out of control. This election season is fraught with local legislative campaigns to "stick it to the Supreme Court" by doing exactly what the court intended by having local referrenda on the scope of eminent domain! No, Kelo doesn't let them take your house just because they want to build a Walmart. There are extremely limited circumstances in which Kelo applies.

The ultimate irony of this is that on almost every issue the right thinks the court system is "out of control" in so far is it protects individual rights from the excesses of the legislature, and yet they prop Kelo up as if its representative of the political goal they are trying to achieve. It isn't.

So, if the left decides to, well, grossly mischaracterize the scope of this new 4th amendment decision, and goes nuts claiming the court is too conservative, well, its dishonest, but I have to admit that its well deserved.

CNN.com - Police don't have to knock, justices say - Jun 15, 2006

Open Notepad and type in this phrase, without the quote marks and with no carriage return: "Bush hid the facts". Now save it and open it again.

Seriously, try this before you click through this link.

27B Stroke 6: Fun MS bug.

This bold new series takes the paranormal/crime-solving phenomenon one step further by following psychic profiler Carla Baron, medium John J. Oliver, and paranormal investigator Patrick Burns as they visit "haunted" crime scenes. Working together, can this unconventional team of experts find clues that will provide new insights into real-life cases that have gone cold?

Well, this isn't something I expected.. Patrick, who is the MemeStreams user Laughing Boy and a PhreakNIC regular attendee, has a television show premiering tonight on CourtTV, at 10:30pm. In the picture on the show's page, he is the one of the right.

Way to go Laughing Boy! For those in Atlanta, on Patrick's website, information about a premier party can be found.

I'm glad to see things are going good for him. The New York Post gave the show a good review:

IF you're a fan of "Psychic Detectives" - and really, which loony among us isn't? - and also of the phenomenally successful "Cold Case," then do I have a show for you.

"Haunting Evidence" combines the best of both shows: Good-looking, blond, female detective among good-looking male detectives. The only difference is that instead of finding clues in carpet fibers, they see ghosts.

When all else fails, bring in the psychic-detective cold-case squad! Together they work the crime scene. (Don't look for swabs and tweezers here - it's more like eyes rolling back into the head and cold spots!)

Haunting Evidence on Court TV

The story about phone number stations posted to Craigslist has been mentioned here before. This is one of those interesting little mysteries. The hearsay only adds to it..

People have suggested that the messages are pranks, or are some sort of commercial gimmick. But at least one person, who is in the U.S. military, says he sent a copy of one of the messages up the chain of command and was promptly notified that it was classified and he wasn’t cleared to know anything further about it. I don’t know whether this is standard operating procedure for any encrypted message or whether it indicates that there’s something to be found.

Third phone numbers station: 678-248-2352 - Homeland Stupidity