Berkeley Councilman Proposes Email Tax To Fund Postal Service
Hahahahahaha
Update: And Ars Technica blame Fox News!
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
WHAT, you think you can do drone strikes in the US?!
From Eric "Good Prosecutorial Discretion" Holder, US Atty General, March 2013:
“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder replied in a letter yesterday to Paul’s question about whether Obama “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.”
From Wikipedia:
Posse Comitatus Act
"...Any use of the Armed Forces under either Title 10/Active Duty or Title 10/Reserves at the direction of the President will offend the Constitutional Law also known as Public Law prohibiting such action unless declared by the President of the United States and approved by Congress."Umm Holder? HOLDER! BUELLER?!?!
Even our president can't authorize drone strikes on US soil against Americans.
(I hope!)
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Monday, March 4, 2013
How much worse do prosecutors have to get?
Quinn Norton is Aaron Swartz's partner, and shows the treatment of Americans by our "justice" system. Is it any wonder that it drove someone who's sensitive to commit suicide?
Should we put up with this? Is this the America we want? Ben Franklin was so right. What do we deserve?
A quote from her moving and heartfelt article:
Is this how we want to appear to the rest of the world? As monsters? Deeply sad.
Update:
From Techdirt: Details Come Out On US Attorneys Withholding Evidence In Aaron Swartz Case
Aaron had broken up (amicably) with Quinn Norton by the time he died, and was in a committed relationship with Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. Who has now laid it out in lavendar (huffpo) how awful our justice employees are treating American Citizens ( so it's the IRS, TSA, Customs, Justice, anyone else?). In case you're not keeping score, in a nutshell:
Should we put up with this? Is this the America we want? Ben Franklin was so right. What do we deserve?
A quote from her moving and heartfelt article:
"We should understand that any alleged crime can become life-ruining if it catches their eyes. Innocence and goodness are only factored in as risks to their case. This is the system that we, as citizens, have agreed to."We should remember that Aaron was only accused of downloading scholarly articles, and previously writing that he thought they should be free. I think this pretty well established as fact.
Is this how we want to appear to the rest of the world? As monsters? Deeply sad.
Update:
From Techdirt: Details Come Out On US Attorneys Withholding Evidence In Aaron Swartz Case
Aaron had broken up (amicably) with Quinn Norton by the time he died, and was in a committed relationship with Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. Who has now laid it out in lavendar (huffpo) how awful our justice employees are treating American Citizens ( so it's the IRS, TSA, Customs, Justice, anyone else?). In case you're not keeping score, in a nutshell:
- Stephen Heymann (asst attorney - works for "Toxic"Carmen Ortiz ) threatened Aaron with 7(30?) years in prison
- Plea bargaining down to months
- Knowing they had withheld exculpatory evidence - was their case falling apart?
- Our favorite US attorney (Holder) said Aaron Swarz was "never threatened with more then 3-6 months"
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Breaking Terms of Service should *NOT* be a federal crime!
This stream from the Center for Internet and Society at the Stanford Law school is a speech from Jennifer Granick from EFF discussing the CFAA
The discussion gelled when Aaron Swartz committed suicide after being harassed by the Federal DA in Boston, illustrating prosecutorial misconduct against a citizen at its worst, and there are plenty more where this came from. Zoe Lofgren is introducing Aaron's Law to help fix this
CFAA states, among other things, "... exceeds authorized access is a federal crime" - does this make any sense any more? Even worse, the federal appeals courts are split on the broad vs narrow interpretation of this statement.
A generation of people who are under 18 and using GMAIL, anyone letting someone log into their facebook account, or on a dating site describing themselves as "tall, dark, and handsome", should not be federal criminals.
This is not an example from an extremist - it's from the 9th federal court of appeals. I think this is it
Support the EFF in their fight to fix the CFAA!
Update: Awesome - A bill to make cell phone unlocking legal
The discussion gelled when Aaron Swartz committed suicide after being harassed by the Federal DA in Boston, illustrating prosecutorial misconduct against a citizen at its worst, and there are plenty more where this came from. Zoe Lofgren is introducing Aaron's Law to help fix this
CFAA states, among other things, "... exceeds authorized access is a federal crime" - does this make any sense any more? Even worse, the federal appeals courts are split on the broad vs narrow interpretation of this statement.
A generation of people who are under 18 and using GMAIL, anyone letting someone log into their facebook account, or on a dating site describing themselves as "tall, dark, and handsome", should not be federal criminals.
This is not an example from an extremist - it's from the 9th federal court of appeals. I think this is it
Support the EFF in their fight to fix the CFAA!
Update: Awesome - A bill to make cell phone unlocking legal
Monday, February 4, 2013
Newegg Wins against the patent trolls!
Update May 2013
From Ars Technica - Newegg wins again against the trolls! Take that suckers!
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/newegg-nukes-corporate-troll-alcatel-in-third-patent-appeal-win-this-year/
W00t!
This is really good, and important. Newegg won an important patent victory against Soverain Software, which said they owned the concept of the online shopping cart. Their claims said that anything that used online shopping carts needed to pay them 1%. This is exactly like someone stating that they owned the patent of a real shopping cart, and every store that used one needed to pay them one per cent of the value of its contents.
This is obviously completely bogus, since their earliest patent was filed in 1994, and I worked at Receptive before that. Not only did we have similar shopping carts, but there were tons of them at the time.
Amazon settled, Victoria's Secret settled, lots of the biggies, maybe all of them, but Newegg stood up.
There's a really good article at Ars Technica where they interview the Chief Legal Officer of Newegg, Lee Cheng, who explains what happened, and also that the founder of Newegg, Fred Chang, "an extremely principled guy, " and "We have always been willing to sacrifice tactical gain for strategic success."
I'm so happy there's still an American company who says that.
Hooray!
The software patent system is horribly broken, and companies that stand up for all of our rights can help expose this problem, get it in front of our legislators, and get it fixed.
There is something we all can do - support Newegg ( in spite of my previous problems, I'm giving them another chance ), and support the EFF.
From Ars Technica - Newegg wins again against the trolls! Take that suckers!
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/newegg-nukes-corporate-troll-alcatel-in-third-patent-appeal-win-this-year/
W00t!
This is really good, and important. Newegg won an important patent victory against Soverain Software, which said they owned the concept of the online shopping cart. Their claims said that anything that used online shopping carts needed to pay them 1%. This is exactly like someone stating that they owned the patent of a real shopping cart, and every store that used one needed to pay them one per cent of the value of its contents.
This is obviously completely bogus, since their earliest patent was filed in 1994, and I worked at Receptive before that. Not only did we have similar shopping carts, but there were tons of them at the time.
Amazon settled, Victoria's Secret settled, lots of the biggies, maybe all of them, but Newegg stood up.
There's a really good article at Ars Technica where they interview the Chief Legal Officer of Newegg, Lee Cheng, who explains what happened, and also that the founder of Newegg, Fred Chang, "an extremely principled guy, " and "We have always been willing to sacrifice tactical gain for strategic success."
I'm so happy there's still an American company who says that.
Hooray!
The software patent system is horribly broken, and companies that stand up for all of our rights can help expose this problem, get it in front of our legislators, and get it fixed.
There is something we all can do - support Newegg ( in spite of my previous problems, I'm giving them another chance ), and support the EFF.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Costin Raiu at Kaspersky on Red October
Really interesting article and podcast at Digital Underground discusses Red October and their techniques in analysis.
He states that it's fundamentally different from Flame in that it's 1000 modules instead of Flames one huge one, although it seems to me that it does similar functions.
He also says he believes that it's someone pretending to be Chinese, like a "false flag operation".
He states that it's fundamentally different from Flame in that it's 1000 modules instead of Flames one huge one, although it seems to me that it does similar functions.
He also says he believes that it's someone pretending to be Chinese, like a "false flag operation".
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