Salt water to replace oil?

AP: "An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the 'most remarkable' water science discovery in a century. John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn. The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel."


Bad. Ass. Yay science!

Wikipedia spin-detector online

27B Stroke6: "Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia's pages."

This is absolutely brilliant.. Corporations, governments, individuals caught in the act of "anonymously" editing unfavorable entries. Hats off Mr. Griffith. You have added to our world. :)

Windows Vista streams personal data to Microsoft

Softpedia: "Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company. "

So on the plus side, Microsoft is pretty open about the fact that they're watching you - although we'd wager that most Vista users are utterly unaware that a steady stream of personal info is phoning home. Is it a spyware OS? Maybe. Maybe not. We're not using it, so we don't really care.

The real question is "who does your computer, your property, serve? You, or others?"

Scientists claim discovery of 'wireless power' 100 years too late

Daily Mail: "Scientists have sounded the death knell for the plug and power lead. In a breakthrough that sounds like something out of Star Trek, they have discovered a way of 'beaming' power across a room into a light bulb, mobile phone or laptop computer without wires or cables. In the first successful trial of its kind, the team was able to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb 7ft away."

Um. No. Had the journalist done any research whatsoever, he would have found what many already know - Nicola Tesla had discovered and used this principal over a century ago.

Even holding a fluorescent tube near a Tesla Coil will cause it to light up. Research, people.

US Military rolling out new drones with anti-crowd tech

The Register: "The US military has taken another step forward with its research into 'non-lethal crowd control systems' after reaching back into the disco era for inspiration.

The US Army is looking to deploy a powerful strobe searchlight mounted in a pilotless drone aircraft. The strobe is intended to cause 'immobilisation to all those within the beam'.

Earlier this year the US Marines tested a vehicle-mounted directed microwave cooker which is intended to lightly grill the outer skin layer of troublemakers, causing an 'intense burning sensation' which is nonetheless harmless – or anyway, less harmful than other things which the US Marines might do."


...does make you wonder what they're anticipating.. A crowd abroad, or at home?

MySpace sued for things they don't have control over...

AP: "NEW YORK - Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.

The law firms, Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies.

'In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,' said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer."


While the assaults themselves are a horrific violation of human rights, dignity and law, and we feel for the parents and the teens involved, the blame rests with the individuals who committed the acts, not MySpace.

We'll bypass the usual comment on parental responsibility, etc. They didn't want this for their children (nor did MySpace), and yes, perhaps if the parents had been more aware of what the small humans in their care were doing (in their houses, using their computers and broadband connections, and under their direct legal supervision), this might never have happened... If they'd raised their children to be cautious online, yatta... But the reality is that kids are their own persons, and what they lack in judgment, they make up for in enthusiasm and ingenuity. Just as parents are often blissfully aware of their kids drug habits, drunken binges and sexual proclivities, they have no idea what they're doing on the internet, or in the real world. But they are closer to the source than myspace -- a collection of interlinked web pages that are simply in one place and easy to use.

The parents, in attempting to hold MySpace responsible for what their kids were ultimately subjected to offline by third parties engaged in criminal conduct, would apply a standard of assumed responsibility to an online destination that's not found anywhere in real-space -- including theaters, shopping malls, Walmart, strip malls, backyards, or anywhere that kids can potentially interact with 'others'.

The Internet is not some hidden darkly magical place divorced from the real world -- the same laws (or lack of laws) should apply. The kids were not abused on MySpace. That would be impossible. They were assaulted in the real world at a physical location -- MySpace was only the medium by which they were able to initially communicate. That could have easily been Yahoo IM, a Cingular moble phone or through a mutual friend.

In the real world, you don't sue a mutual friend for an introduction that lead to something bad later on that they had nothing to do with.

While we do sincerely feel for the victims here, the perps are the ones who did the abusing. Lashing out at MySpace is a cynical move. Telling is the tens of millions in compensation being sought. MySpace may not have anything to do with this, but they're the ones with cash...



2/15/07: Update: The judge in the case has tossed out the lawsuit. With this much cash at stake and no real downside, the family will likely appeal...

SSH key spoofing at Tor exit nodes?

Seul.org: Looks like someone is running 'evil' TOR exit nodes that are trying to do man-in-the-middle attacks against SSH run through them... Interesting.

Hard to be secure when you can't trust the exit point...

Microsoft wants robots to run Windows

CNet: "Microsoft on Wednesday took the wraps off its first commercial operating system for robots, with hopes of paving the way for a broader robotics industry and taking a central role in its development. "


What could possibly go wrong?

RFID passports less useful to machines too...

EPIC: "A document obtained by EPIC from the State Department reveals that 2004 government tests found passports with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that are read 27% to 43% less successfully than the previous Machine Readable Zone technology (two lines of text printed at the bottom of the first page of a passport)."

"Recent reports by the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee and European experts also recommend against the use of RFID tags in identity documents."


Not particularly surprising on the face of it. What is surprising is that in spite of the above reports (even within DHA), we're all marching headlong into requirements for a fundamentally flawed and insecure system in the name of theater. Blech.


(link via Schneier)

Voting Machines. Need we say more?

AP: "Voting machines began wreaking havoc the minute the polls opened Tuesday, delaying voters in dozens of Indiana and Ohio precincts and leaving some in Florida with little choice but turn to paper ballots instead.

In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new voting machines that they couldn't get to start properly.

'We got five machines _ one of them's got to work,' said Willette Scullank, a trouble shooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.

Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts. Delaware County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly.

'We are working with precincts one-by-one over the telephone to get the problem fixed,' Wenger said.""


Oh, this is going to go well. There are apparently tens of thousands of lawyers on standby, and the EFF will be taking calls on 'irregularities' at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Of course, if these horribly insecure boxes are hacked with minimal effort to swing elections, we'll probably never know.

New 'contactless' credit cards are like wearing your data on a t-shirt...

New York Times: "The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards — cards whose data is relayed by radio waves without need of a signature or physical swiping through a machine. Tens of millions of the cards have been issued, and equipment for their use is showing up at a growing number of locations, including CVS pharmacies, McDonald’s restaurants and many movie theaters.

The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any intelligible information. American Express has said its cards incorporate “128-bit encryption,” and J. P. Morgan Chase has said that its cards, which it calls Blink, use “the highest level of encryption allowed by the U.S. government.”

But in tests on 20 cards from Visa, MasterCard and American Express, the researchers here found that the cardholder’s name and other data was being transmitted without encryption and in plain text. They could skim and store the information from a card with a device the size of a couple of paperback books, which they cobbled together from readily available computer and radio components for $150."

We'd touched on this topic back in '03 when 'Paypass' was announced, but it's good to see that the card companies continue to spend millions on a solution in search of a problem. Even better that they've found a way to make ID theft and credit card fraud easier than it already is.

Mobile phones as physical 'cookies'.. another reason to disable Bluetooth...

New Scientist: "A public advertising screen tailors the ads it shows by monitoring the Bluetooth gadgets being carried by its nearby audience, and avoids repeating the same ad to the same person where possible.

The display detects the presence of devices fitted with Bluetooth wireless transmitters carried by people walking past, such as cellphones and PDAs. Software agents then 'bid' against one another to determine which adverts are then shown to those viewers."

"As each passing device has a unique Bluetooth signal, this enables the screen to identify different individuals passing by. It builds a record of the adverts those people have been previously been shown to make sure messages are not repeated."


Yech. And this is good because...? Isn't the point of annoying, intrusive advertising to beam itself into your consciousness through repetition anyway? Why would an advertiser only want one impression? (confused)... And why on earth would normal people want to voluntarily provide profile information to allow 'targeted' ads to be bounced at them in public spaces?

The genius move for some MIT wonk would be to modify 'augmented reality' glasses to include adblockers that replace advertising in public spaces with pictures of puppies or something...

Well, the Germans were always good at numbering people...

SecurityFocus: "The U.S. government is going forward with the public deployment of its electronic passport, ordering millions of the wireless chips from semiconductor firm Infineon to place in the back cover of the nation's travel document, the German company announced on Monday."

"at the latest Black Hat Briefings security conference, a German researchers showed how someone could read the data out from a passport and clone the functions of the digital document using a smart-card chip. The Smart Card Alliance, an industry group, dismissed the significance of the finding."


Note: The cloneable insecure identity-laden spychips can easily be negated with a few seconds in a microwave before traveling...

License Plate Tracking for All

Wired News: "Jealous lovers may soon have an alternative to sniffing for perfume to catch a cheating mate: Just follow their license plate.

In recent years, police around the country have started to use powerful infrared cameras to read plates and catch carjackers and ticket scofflaws. But the technology will soon migrate into the private sector, and morph into a tool for tracking individual motorists' movements, says former policeman Andy Bucholz, who's on the board of Virginia-based G2 Tactics, a manufacturer of the technology.

Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says.

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR industry could explode, says Bucholz."


Ah, the mission creep of ubiquitous surveillance driven by private firms and governments alike... If the use of popup blockers, cookie blockers, caller-ID blocking and the universal hatred of spyware haven't been obvious enough, let's all say it together: no one likes being tracked. No one likes surreptitious information gathering by persons or groups unknown for purposes unknown.

No group can be trusted with information about you. They lose it, sell it, misuse it, and there's no 'opt out', no visibility, and no control...

This should be the tipping point where we all start talking about significant loophole-free personal privacy laws. The odds are currently violently stacked against Joe and Jane Human...