The Fourth Amendment is Gone. “Welcome to the fish bowl.”
February 25th, 2010Via: Reason:
Last week the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied an en banc rehearing of the case United States v. Lemus, which dealt with a warrantless police search of a suspect’s home after he was arrested outside of it. As a result of the 9th Circuit’s denial, the search will stand, which has left Chief Judge Alex Kozinski none too happy. In dissent, Kozinksi basically accused his colleagues of abandoning the Fourth Amendment:
This is an extraordinary case: Our court approves, without blinking, a police sweep of a person’s home without a warrant, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion and without exigency—in other words, with nothing at all to support the entry except the curiosity police always have about what they might find if they go rummaging around a suspect’s home. Once inside, the police managed to turn up a gun “in plain view”—stuck between two cushions of the living room couch—and we reward them by upholding the search.
Did I mention that this was an entry into somebody’s home, the place where the protections of the Fourth Amendment are supposedly at their zenith?…
The opinion misapplies Supreme Court precedent, conflicts with our own case law and is contrary to the great weight of authority in the other circuits. It is also the only case I know of, in any jurisdiction covered by the Fourth Amendment, where invasion of the home has been approved based on no showing whatsoever. Nada. Gar nichts. Rien du tout. Bupkes.
Whatever may have been left of the Fourth Amendment after [United States v. Black] is now gone. The evisceration of this crucial constitutional protector of the sanctity and privacy of what Americans consider their castles is pretty much complete. Welcome to the fish bowl.
Please Rob Me
February 25th, 2010Via: New Zealand Herald:
As more people reveal their whereabouts on social networks, a new site has sprung up to remind you that letting everyone know where you are – and, by extension, where you’re not – could leave you vulnerable to those with less-than-friendly intentions. The site’s name says it all: Please Rob Me.
Launched last week, Please Rob Me is exceptionally straightforward. Pretty much all it does is show posts that appear on Twitter from a location-sharing service, Foursquare.
Please Rob Me puts these posts into a long, chronological list it refers to as “Recent Empty Homes.”
Please Rob Me assembles its list by taking information that Twitter makes freely available so that many websites can show tweets. But the point of Please Rob Me could be made with data that flows on dozens of other sites as well.
People are comfortable sharing all kinds of personal details on social sites such as Facebook.
And now people are flocking to location-based web services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt, that let them use their cell phones to alert friends to where they are.
Some people choose to show their whereabouts only to approved buddies. But plenty push these very specific updates through public Twitter profiles that anyone can see.
This phenomenon is what motivated the creators of Please Rob Me, according to one of them, Boy Van Amstel, 25.
Van Amstel said in a phone interview from Holland, where the site is based, that technology has become so easy to use that people are sharing too much online without even realising it. He and his co-founders want people to think twice about it.
Fur Really Flying Over Latest Telecom XT Outage
February 25th, 2010UPDATE: NOW EMERGENCY SYSTEM FAILS IN AUCKLAND
Put a fork in it.
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Emergency services are experiencing difficulties with the 111 system, with some callers unable to reach police.
Police said the problem appeared to be confined to the Auckland area, and Telecom was working on the problem.
National Radio reported the 111 system went down at around 3.30am.
Telecom spokesman Mark Watts said the problem may be intermittent and some 111 callers may be able to get through.
He said Telecom was taking the issue very seriously and trying to fix the problem as quickly as possible.
He told National Radio this morning today’s problem was not related to the XT network but affected callers on all networks on landlines and mobiles.
National Radio reported callers have been getting a range of responses including an engaged signal and no signal at all.
It reported that police were still having trouble with the system at 7am.
Anyone who was unable to reach police by calling 111 should call their local police station or (09) 571 2800 and their call would be forwarded to emergency services.
Telecom is required by law to provide emergency calling on its fixed network. However, mobile phones are not covered.
It’s the second time in days that the 111 system has gone down.
—End Update—
Via: Computer World New Zealand:
The company behind Telecom’s troubled XT network is flying in dozens of its top experts from around the world in a bid to fix the beleaguered system.
The government has branded the network problems as “terribly embarrassing” and has asked for an urgent report on the fault.
Communications Minister Steven Joyce has warned he is prepared to regulate cellphone companies to ensure 111 calls are a priority when networks fail.
The latest network failure has resulted in a second scalp. Telecom’s second highest-ranking executive resigned yesterday.
Telecom has offered disgruntled customers south of Taupo a $10 million compensation package. It follows a $5 million payout at the start of the month.
It also vowed to try to keep customers, saying it would talk directly to each one who wanted to jump ship to other providers.
Ben Verwaayen, global chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, which built Telecom’s XT network, said from New York yesterday that the problems in New Zealand had never been seen before.
“Apparently there are things in New Zealand that are really specific and we need to understand that better than we have done. It is our responsibility to make sure we rectify the situation as quickly as possible.”
The company had used the same technology in other countries successfully, he said. A team of experts was on its way to New Zealand, but was “not the cavalry”.
“I apologise to the customers of the network. They have the right to expect a flawless service — that is what they are paying for. We have let Telecom … down on that and we are going to make sure we rectify it.”
Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds said saying “sorry” was not good enough.
“Actions have to speak louder than words. They’re [Alcatel] on notice because it has to get fixed. This works well in the rest of the world. We want to know why it doesn’t [work] in New Zealand.”
As compensation XT customers south of Taupo will save 33 percent on their monthly plans for three months. Pre-paid customers will get a 33 percent bonus when they top up. Business customers will be offered a 50 percent credit.
The latest fault exposed a glitch in 111 cellphone coverage that left some customers unable to make emergency calls, including one trying to report a serious attack.
Although Mr Joyce warned of regulating to ensure 111 calls got through, he said there was little the government could do to address continuing faults in the XT network because Telecom was a private company. But he was seeking urgent assurances that 111 calls would be possible on the XT network if there were more failures.
Nationwide Strike Paralyzes Greece
February 24th, 2010Via: Wall Street Journal:
Tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets Wednesday as much of the country went on a 24-hour strike against government austerity measures.
A small group of youths threw Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with tear gas. However, the 20,000 people who filed through downtown Athens—a relatively large crowd for a Greek strike—mostly limited themselves to chanting anti-government slogans.
Public- and private-sector unions called the strike to protest a range of measures aimed at reducing Greece’s budget deficit. The government has announced a freeze on civil-service wages, cuts in public-sector entitlements and the closing of tax loopholes for certain professions, including some civil servants. It has also announced a fuel-tax increase.
Secret AIG Document Shows Goldman Sachs Minted Most Toxic CDOs
February 24th, 2010In an e-mail message to select clients, Thomas C. Mazarakis, the head of Goldman’s fundamental strategies group, acknowledged that his unit often provided investment ideas that the firm had already traded on. Sometimes Goldman has even taken the opposite approach, betting against particular instruments that the group has recommended.
“We may trade, and may have existing positions, based on trading ideas before we have discussed those trading ideas with you,” he wrote.
Via: Bloomberg:
When a congressional panel convened a hearing on the government rescue of American International Group Inc. in January, the public scolding of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got the most attention.
Lawmakers said the former head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank had presided over a backdoor bailout of Wall Street firms and a coverup. Geithner countered that he had acted properly to avert the collapse of the financial system.
A potentially more important development slipped by with less notice, Bloomberg Markets reports in its April issue. Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, placed into the hearing record a five-page document itemizing the mortgage securities on which banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA had bought $62.1 billion in credit-default swaps from AIG.
These were the deals that pushed the insurer to the brink of insolvency — and were eventually paid in full at taxpayer expense. The New York Fed, which secretly engineered the bailout, prevented the full publication of the document for more than a year, even when AIG wanted it released.
Citigroup Warns Customers It May Refuse To Allow Withdrawals
February 24th, 2010Via: Business Insider:
The image of banks locking their doors to keep customers from making withdrawals during a bank run is what immediately came to mind when we heard that Citigroup was telling customers it has the right to prevent any withdrawals from checking accounts for seven days.
“Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change,” Citigroup said on statements received by customers all over the country.
What’s going on? It seems that this is something of an error. The seven day notice policy only applies to customers in Texas, Ira Stoll reports at The Future of Capitalism. It was accidentally included on customer statements nationwide.
“Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Citi,” Stoll writes. “But it’s hard to believe a bank would be sending out a notice like that on its statements.”
UPDATE: According to Stoll, Citi issued a statement saying that it has been required to make this change by Federal regulations–and it no longer sounds like it’s limited to Texas:
Update: Citibank has now released the following statement by way of explanation: “When Citibank moved to unlimited FDIC coverage in 2009, we had to reclassify many checking accounts to allow for immediate withdrawals in order to ensure all customers qualified for the additional coverage. When we moved back to standard FDIC coverage with most major banks in 2010, Citibank decided to reclassify those accounts back to make them eligible again for promotional incentives. To do so, Federal Reserve Reg D requires these accounts, called NOW accounts, to reserve the right to require a 7-day notice of withdrawal. We recently communicated this technical requirement to our customers. However, we have never exercised this right and have no plans to do so in the future.”
Oil Spill Reaches Italy’s River Po After ‘Sabotage’
February 24th, 2010Via: BBC:
An oil spill has reached Italy’s River Po after the suspected sabotage of a former refinery led to large amounts of oil pouring into a tributary.
The spill began early on Tuesday when someone broke into the plant near Monza, now an oil depot, and opened the taps, Italian news reports said.
They said an estimated 600,000 litres (158,500 gallons) of petrol and oil were released in to the River Lambro.
Efforts to prevent the spill reaching the Po failed.
Local authorities said they had put barriers in place north-east of Piacenza to try to stop the spill from spreading further, and that they would issue an order to local communities not to take water from the river.
The Po is Italy’s longest river, flowing west across the north of the country for more than 650km (404 miles) to the Adriatic.
The Italian environmental group Legambiente called the spill “an unprecedented ecological disaster for the ecosystem of the Lambro river”.
Hundreds of birds are reported to have been killed by the spill.
The Future Where Soda Cans Have Screens
February 24th, 2010My ability to grasp what many people consider to be “normal” is slipping away, a little bit each day.
I wonder if this is how my dad felt when, over a decade ago, I explained to him that I didn’t always need to go to the office in order to do my work. My dad never used computers and was usually content to shake his head in awe when people tried to explain what they were doing with technology. But this remote control stuff seemed to seriously get to my dad. The fact that I was working from home, “Almost like I was sitting in front of my workstation at the office,” was too much for him. It wasn’t a look of awe and wonder. He was genuinely baffled and, I think, a bit frightened.
These weren’t his exact words, but it was something very close to:
“I watched those guys walk on the moon… At the time, I wondered, was it a movie set? Was the whole point of it just to f*&@ with the Russians? Whether or not it was real, it somehow made a bit of sense to me. I could at least grasp that it could have happened.
What you’re doing there… That’s totally beyond me.”
Flash forward to today. As I watched Jesse Schell’s presentation, it became my turn to feel baffled and frightened.
FarmVille? What is that?
According to Wikipedia:
FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and raising livestock. Since its launch in June 2009, FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook, with over 75.2 million active users and over 18.1 million fans in January 2010.
75.2 million people are on Facebook, pretending to grow vegetables and raise animals in their browser windows?
How palpably bat shit nuts is that?
Wikipedia goes on:
Like most Zynga games, FarmVille leverages the social networking aspects of Facebook. Along with their own farm, players can invite their friends to join and be neighbors. Acquiring neighbors has benefits in gameplay — not only can one earn money and experience (by visiting and helping on neighboring farms), but with eight or more neighbors, a player can expand their farm and own more acreage. Gifts (such as trees, animals, and decorations) can be sent to both confirmed neighbors and any other Facebook friends even if they do not use the application. The Gifts received from neighbors usually have relatively expensive buy prices in the market; so getting gifts from friends is one of the best ways to get relatively expensive items. Many of the items available to gift to friends are not available in the FarmVille market. This includes many themed decorations.
A variety of “Ribbons” are also available to players, representing the player’s achievement of a series of set tasks. The player first obtains a yellow ribbon for completing a simple version of the task, then progresses through white, red, and blue ribbons by completing progressively more difficult versions of the same task. For example, the “Fenced In” Yellow ribbon requires that the player purchase and display on his farm 5 sections of fence. The white ribbon for the same task requires 50 sections of fence be set up, and the red and blue ribbons get progressively harder and more expensive to complete. There are presently twenty-eight different tasks, for a total of 112 total ribbons available to be earned. In addition to bragging rights, a player earning a ribbon gets a tangible reward for his efforts, which may include a gold item, experience bonus, the award of a special item, or some other benefit.
Has it really come to this? Getting ribbons for bragging rights in Facebook games? I know. I know. Nothing new under the sun, Kevin. You’ll tell me how you spent your allowance getting high score on Defender in 1981. (Or something like that.)
It’s not the same.
I don’t know how old you were in 1981, but I was ten when I was spending my allowance getting high score on Defender. What’s the average age of the people who are playing FarmVille? I’m sure it’s much older than 10.
You might have been like me and never even heard of this FarmVille madness before today, but if we are to believe that 75.2 million people are spending any amount of time doing this…
Holy shit and sweet Jesus on a stick: What does that mean?
Has reality become such a mean and ugly bitch that tens of millions of people are searching for a functional society inside the screen? Why is a game about small scale agriculture the most popular game of all on Facebook? Do the people playing this game have access to safe, affordable, good tasting food?
If you think that FarmVille is nuts/strange/chilling, the corporate dystopia is now targeting the imaginations of very young children by using regular stuffed animals as a gateway to the machine world. Let’s look at Webkinz.
Again, from Wikipedia:
Webkinz are toy stuffed animals that were originally released by the Ganz company on April 29, 2005. The toys are similar to many other small plush toys, however, each Webkinz toy has an attached tag with a unique “Secret Code” printed on it that allows access to the “Webkinz World” website. On Webkinz World, the Secret Code allows the user to own a virtual version of the pet for online play for a limited time. To maintain long-term access to an account, the user must continue to purchase additional stuffed toys.
There are also smaller, less expensive versions of the toys called Lil’ Kinz as well as larger, slightly more expensive versions in the Signature collection launched in early 2009. In June 2008, Ganz opened the Webkinz eStore, where users can buy virtual items such as furniture, clothing, charms, and online-only pets. eStore items can only be used in conjunction with an active Webkinz or Webkinz, Jr. account.
Sales of plush Webkinz and Lil’kinz are limited to the United States and Canada, however virtual pets can be purchased from the eStore by international residents. Secret Codes issued in conjunction with virtual pets can be used the same way as Secret Codes attached to plush pets.
At this point, in Jesse Schell’s talk, I started raving like a lunatic, but I managed not to swear. (Owen, our two-year-old son, can repeat a lot of what we say at this point.) Becky asked what was the matter. I went out to tell her about Webkinz. Her face contorted in horror.
“It’s true,” I assured her. “People are handing over their money and their children’s imaginations to this company.”
Owen was sitting on his sheep skin pelt, next to the book shelf, quietly looking through The Tale of Mr. Tod. When he heard his mother and me talking about screens, he immediately and forcefully started interrupting us.
“Dell booper! Dell booper! More Dell booper!” Nodding his head, yes, yes.
My son’s reaction to electronic gadgets is like mashup between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Ghost in the Shell.
Months ago, I noticed that he wouldn’t just sit on my knee and enjoy a few minutes of looking at pictures of family members, creatures and various machines on the screen. No way, man. He wanted to pull the whole thing apart. Turn it off and on fifty or a hundred times. Right clicking reliably brought up menus on the screen. The Windows button never got old either.
I thought, “Wow, he’s really into this, I suppose it’s ok.” But there was no off switch for this. When it was time to do something else, back arching, screaming and tears resulted. And when we were doing other things, he’d want the booper.
We’ve stopped all screen access with him. It has been several months since he has had any time at all with a screen, and even now, just mentioning it sets him off.
I went to the Webkinz site and pretty much recoiled in horror. That thing must be like a crackpipe x10,000 to a young child. I wonder if there is potential for harm by allowing young children to mess around with this hi-tech crack? If they aren’t having to use their imaginations to create the play, and, instead, rely on interactions with the machine, what are the long term implications of that?
Owen carries his stuffed animals around and pretends to feed them and give them water. He asks for us to read books to him and he’ll select a creature to cuddle and hold it so it can “see” the book too. (Slack Jack Bunny and Gruffalo are his favorites.) When he was about a year old and breast feeding, he held up Slack Jack Bunny to Becky’s breast and she held it there and pretended to feed it. Owen cackled. He thought that was absolutely hilarious. Anyway, on and on. I know it’s boring to read about other people’s kids, but the point is that he didn’t need any [expletive deleted] Webkinz service to come up with all of this.
I just picked two of several disturbing aspects of Jesse Schell’s talk, and I didn’t even get to the last several minutes of holy rolling, speaking in tongues, snake handling madness. The part about the soda cans with screens.
I’m not a Luddite. I started using computers when I was eight. I earned a living in corporate IT. I’m using a computer at this very moment. But the reality Schell is describing in the last part of his talk sounds unthinkably grim to me.
“Come on,” I mumbled to myself, as Schell unfurled toward the end, “Who is going to tolerate all of that nonsense?”
Oh, wait. How many FarmVille players are there again?
Shit.
New U.S. Embassy in London Will Cost $1 Billion; Yes, That Includes the Moat
February 24th, 2010Via: Times Online:
The United States has unveiled plans for its new $1 billion high-security embassy in London — the most expensive it has ever built.
The proposals were met with relief from both the present embassy’s Mayfair neighbours and the residents and developers of the Battersea wasteland where the vast crystalline cube, surrounded by a moat, will be built.
The decision to abandon the former site in Grosvenor Square by 2016 came after a prolonged battle with residents angered by the security measures demanded after the September 11 attacks. More than a hundred residents took out a full-page advertisement in The Times to oppose tighter measures that they said would leave the area more vulnerable to attack.
The new embassy, on a former industrial site behind Battersea power station known for its gay clubs, will be designed by Kieran Timberlake, the Philadelphia architect.
A moat 30 metres (100ft) wide and rolling parkland will separate the building from the main road, protecting it from would-be bombers and removing the need for the blast barriers that so dismayed the people of Mayfair.
The State Department sought to play down the cost of security measures, noting the expense of London building work. But the price puts the London embassy above the US’s most fortified missions, including the Baghdad embassy, which cost $600 million (£390 million) but required a further $100 million of work on air conditioning, and the Islamabad embassy, still under construction, which has cost more than $850 million.
It also does not include the 17.5 per cent VAT demanded by the Treasury on all buildings in Britain and which the US has refused to pay.
Baby DNA Sent to Military Lab for Potential Use in National Database
February 24th, 2010Via: Statesman:
An Austin lawyer threatened to pursue a new federal lawsuit Monday after learning that some newborn blood samples in Texas went to the U.S. military for potential use in a database for law enforcement purposes.
The Department of State Health Services never mentioned the database to Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, who settled a lawsuit in December with the state over the indefinite storage of newborn blood without parental consent, or to the American-Statesman, which first reported on the little-known blood storage practice last spring. Harrington said he thought another suit was likely unless the health department destroys the information obtained from the blood samples or obtains consent.
“This is the worst case of bad faith I have dealt with as a lawyer,” he said Monday.
Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas attorney general’s office, which represented the health department, fired back. “During this litigation, Harrington was provided accurate answers to the questions he asked,” he said.
“Once Harrington negotiated $26,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs for himself, accepted a settlement agreement and got his desired headlines, he was satisfied and dropped his
lawsuit against DSHS. It appears recent media reports caused Harrington to backtrack in an effort to obscure how he chose to handle this case,” he said
An article Monday by the Texas Tribune, a news Web site, said the state health department sent 800 anonymous samples to the military to help create a national mitochondrial DNA database. The samples were sent in 2003 and 2007, according to the department’s Web site.
Carrie Williams, a health department spokeswoman, said the program wasn’t mentioned because, “We don’t publicize every agency initiative or contract, and obviously this is a sensitive topic.”
Texas agreed to take part in the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory database project because blood spots might help identify “ethnic or ancestral origins of unidentified corpses using mitochondrial DNA,” Williams said. “We believed it was an important research project that could potentially help in missing persons cases.”
The blood samples are taken from the heel during newborn screening tests for genetic disorders.
The blood spots are collected on coded cards, with the names matching those codes kept on file at the health department. Names are not disclosed without parental consent, the department says.
In March, Harrington sued in federal court on behalf of four parents and a pregnant woman who later dropped out, claiming that the state’s collection and indefinite storage of the samples since 2002 amounted to “an unlawful search and seizure.”
The Legislature approved a law in May that requires medical professionals to inform parents or guardians that the blood spots are being collected, stored and could be used for research. Parents who object could opt out.
In December, Harrington settled his suit when the health department agreed to destroy 5.3 million samples.
“I can’t tell you how many times we sat there, and they said no law enforcement,” Harrington said of the lawsuit discussions. “They said, ‘It’s only about medical research, it’s only about medical research.’\u2009”
Williams said the project has been listed on the Web site for weeks and “falls under the broader category of public health research.”
“Our intentions over the years have been good,” she added, “and we are moving forward with the positive changes to the program.”
