Threat Level is one of four finalists in the 2008 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism for our readers' work digging up over 100 self-serving anonymous edits performed by corporations and governments on Wikipedia.

Readers used WikiScanner to uncover the shenanigans.

I hope they are also thanking Virgil. He did most of the work here, really.

Thanks, Wikipedia Sleuths! Threat Level Places in Innovative Journalism Awards | Threat Level from Wired.com

From: Peter Swire [peter@peterswire.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 11:57 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: DHS responds on laptop searches; direct action campaigns

Dave:

Public concern about laptop searches seems to be getting the attention of senior officials at DHS.

Yesterday, they posted “Answering Questions about Laptop Searches” by Jayson Ahern, Deputy Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection: http://www.dhs.gov/journal/leadership/

It links to his June 30 post on “CBP Laptop Searches”: http://www.dhs.gov/journal/leadership/2008/06/cbp-laptop-searches.html. Readers may wish to add their comments to the blog post.

Their basic point remains the same – customs has checked people’s items at the border for 200 years, so they can check your laptop.

Meanwhile, this issue has hit the front page of DailyKos, http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/4/141837/1015, and Dave Farber’s list gets mentioned in the Salon article, http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/08/04/encryption/index.html.

Two direct action campaigns are underway:

(1) “Hands Off My Laptop,” from Center for American Progress Action Fund: http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/288/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6239

(2) Electronic Frontier Foundation action site: https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?alertId=373&pg=makeACall.

Peter

Prof. Peter P. Swire
C. William O'Neil Professor of Law
Moritz College of Law
The Ohio State University
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
(240) 994-4142, www.peterswire.net

Lots about laptop searches

I bought a Prius!

"There's no question about it," Bush said. "Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

With Bush at the country's helm, why wouldn't they?

The Hill's Blog Briefing Room » Bush on Economy: 'Wall Street Got Drunk'

Customs and Border Patrol at the Department of Homeland Security was just given the green light to search and seize laptops at the border, without probable cause, by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. They can deny entry to anyone who refuses to give up their laptops and password. This is an affront to our progressive values of privacy and protection from unwarranted search and seizure.

This is the CAP Action Campaign Decius mentioned during his talk at the Last HOPE. You can use this form to request that Customs perform a privacy impact assessment on the practice.

I Am Progress - Hands Off My Laptop

The National Park Service is considering reopening Lady Liberty's crown for the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to documents a congressman released on July Fourth.

YES! This must be reopened.

Statue of Liberty's crown may reopen to public - Yahoo! News

From Decius:

More evidence that sex offender hysteria motivates corrupt legislators to produce policy that is fucking stupid.

The facts are pretty darned sad. Barely more than a child himself at 19, Bradshaw was charged with statutory rape for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. Fine. That’s punishable. I’d prefer it had been kept out of the criminal justice system (see here for more) but its punishable. He gets 5 years.

After he gets out he gives an invalid address. For that, too, he pleads guilty and is sentenced to time served. When released he moves in with his sister but can’t live there because Georgia’s draconian sex offender law won’t let him live within 1,000 feet of a recreation center!

He moves in with an aunt but can’t stay there because the home is within 1,000 feet of the First Baptist Church! Growing desperate, he finds a family friend but this time inadvertently transposes the street address!

Now the cops move in. Bradshaw is arrested because he hadn’t moved into the friend’s single-wide trailer within the legally required 72 hours — and lied and said he did! His mandatory sentence for this infraction is life in prison.

A Georgia lawyer in this thread says that many of these people end up being homeless because they cannot find a place to live that complies with the law, and then they end up getting arrested for being homeless.

Fortunately we have elected representatives who are capable of forming logical thoughts:

Sen. President pro tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said the law is clear.

"I wish it hadn't happened, but there are consequences for people's actions," said Johnson, a chief sponsor of the offender law. "What would have happened if he had given the wrong address and had lived in a place and was harming a child next door? The law is trying to protect children. Justice has to be blind to motive."

1. Eric Johnson recommended these particular consequences. He has to defend why they are appropriate, and not refer to them as if they are beyond his control!
2. This person is not a pedophile.
3. This is not an attempt to protect children. Strict statutory rape laws are designed to attack teenagers for having sex out of wedlock. In this case coupled with a hysteria driven over broad sex offender registration rule intended as marketing fodder for political campaigns.
4. No, justice does not have to be blind to motive! There is a difference between malice murder and involuntary manslaughter. If you don't understand that you shouldn't be writing laws.

Georgia Supreme Court considers proportionality in sex offender case

Billy strikes again:

In response to all the Mass SQL Injection attacks this year, Microsoft approached HP and the Web Security Research Group (formerly SPI Labs) for assistance. While there was nothing they could patch, Microsoft wanted to provide tools to help developers find and fix these issues. After a month of development HP created Scrawlr.

Scrawlr (short for SQL Injector and Crawler) is a free tool that will crawl a website while simultaneously analyzing the parameters of each individual web page for SQL Injection vulnerabilities. Scrawlr was designed specifically to help protect against these mass injection attack which are using Google queries to find older web applications and automatically injection them. As such, Scrawlr crawls a websites using the same techniques as a search engine: it doesn’t keep state, or submit forms, or execute JavaScript or Flash. This Scrawl is finding and auditing the pages that would have been indexed by the search engines.

To reduce false positives Scrawlr provides proof of the vulnerability results by displaying the type of backend database in use and a list of available table names. There is no denying you have SQL Injection when I can show you table names!

Microsoft Advisory
HP Web Security Research Group Blog
Scrawlr Download
Scrawlr FAQ

Introduction Scrawlr: a free Crawler + SQL Injector tool

Peter Swire testifies to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on why laptop searches of Americans returning from overseas is a violation of privacy.

Peter is a co-worker of mine. Click through to read his testimony.

No, You Can't Search My Laptop

Comedian-actor George Carlin, known for his raunchy, but insightful humor, died Sunday in Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 71.

Jeff Abraham says Carlin went into St. John's Health Center on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain. Carlin died at 5:55 p.m. PDT, the Associated Press reported.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

R.I.P. George Carlin