Eideard

A federal judge pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of drug possession and another charge, admitting he had paid a stripper to buy drugs for the two to use together.

Senior U.S. District Court Judge Jack Camp Jr. admitted to giving money to a woman to buy drugs, according to prosecutors.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of drug possession, federal prosecutors said. He also pleaded guilty to one count of conversion of government property for giving the woman a government-issued laptop. As part of a plea deal, Camp did not plead guilty to a firearms possession charge included in the initial federal complaint…

Federal prosecutors accused Camp of giving Sherry Ann Ramos, 26, money to buy drugs including cocaine, marijuana and roxicodone, which the two then frequently used together.

FBI agents arrested Camp on October 1 after he tried to buy drugs from an undercover informant.

The judge is spending time reflecting upon the “uncharacteristic nature of his actions.” Seems absolutely characteristic of some of the judges, police chiefs and respected senior politicians I’ve known over the years.

Having recently had surgery, the professor could not be bothered to drop off his backpack in his apartment before first going to the laundry room. He instead left the bag behind a door in the stairwell, thinking it would be safe for a few minutes.

But when he returned a short time later, the bag was missing, along with the computer, keys, calendar and other documents inside.

The professor was most upset by the loss of his calendar. “It is my life. I have documented everything in it that has happened in the last 10 years and beyond,” he told the newspaper…

But when he went down to the stairwell a short time later, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“The backpack was there again. With all the papers, calendar and credit cards. It was just the computer that was missing,” he explained…Resigned to having lost his computer, the professor was nevertheless happy to have the rest of his belongings back.

But the considerate thief had yet one more surprise in store. About a week after the theft, the professor returned home to find an envelope containing a USB memory stick which had been taken along with the computer.

The professor was shocked to discover the thief had copied all the documents and personal files from his laptop to the memory storage device…

Besides the computer, the only other item that has not yet been returned is the professor’s library card.

Maybe the thief will pay any outstanding late fees at the library?

A federal judge has dismissed a plaintiff’s lawsuit against Apple that accused company employees of waiting like “vultures” to spy on her every time she used an Apple laptop to access the Internet.

Leslie Carr sought to recover $60 million for trauma, which she said kept her from publishing on the Web. She alleged, among other things, that each time she used the laptop to go online, “there would be a mass number of Apple employees waiting greedily like vultures to survey and monitor my life.”

But U.S. District Judge Richard Berman said the complaint “fails to state a plausible claim for relief. Where, as here, a complaint is asserting unrealistic and unsupportable claims, a court may dismiss it.”

Carr did not return a call seeking comment.

I presume she’s been hired as a stringer for Gizmodo.

Protesters v Police in Thailand

Eyewitness is Guardian’s first service that has a mode specially designed for the iPad. I enjoy the hell out of it. One of the most satisfying apps I have found – so far. Not that I’m looking for many.

My essential review of the iPad only takes two sentences:

The iPad easily replaces a laptop used as a laptop. It does not replace a laptop used as a desktop computer.

Works for me.

A federal class action claims a suburban school district has been spying on students and families through the “indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students,” without the knowledge or consent of students or parents. The plaintiffs say they learned that Big Brother was in their home when an assistant principal told their son that the school district knew he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district.”

The families say the Lower Merion School District issued Webcam-equipped personal laptop computers to each of its approximately 1,800 high school students: in Harriton High School in Rosemont, and Lower Merion High School in Ardmore. The schools issued the computers as part of a “one-to-one” laptop computer initiative lauded by Superintendent Christopher McGinley as an effort that “enhances opportunities for ongoing collaboration, and ensures that all students have 24/7 access to school based resources and the ability to seamlessly work on projects and research at school and at home.”

But the parents and students say that, without their knowledge, the access went both ways. Nowhere in any “written documentation accompanying the laptop,” or in any “documentation appearing on any Web site or handed out to students or parents concerning the use of the laptop,” was any reference made “to the fact that the school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam at any time the school district wished to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera,” the complaint states…

The school district in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student’s personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer.

Defendants include the Lower Merion School District [info@lmsd.org], the Board of Directors [capitalcomments@lmsd.org] of the Lower Merion School District, and Superintendent McGinley [mcginleyc@lmsd.org].

What a flock of bureaucratic creeps! It’s damning enough of our social and political culture that the Bill of Rights probably wouldn’t get through Congress, today. But, you would think that preservation of your boring little sinecure, some cardboard closet for administrative ditto machines, would suggest liberty and privacy are overriding concerns when considering a policy as abhorrent as this?

Thanks, Cinaedh

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Munich international airport was re-opened on Wednesday after a three-hour shut down caused when a passenger left the security check even though his laptop computer set off an explosives detector, police said.

About 1,200 police did not find the man in their search of the terminal, which was shut down and completely evacuated. All passengers had to go through security checks a second time after the terminal was re-opened, an airport spokesman said.

“We checked the terminal intensively and we’re certain that there are no explosives or dangerous materials in the terminal,” said Peter Pruemm, a spokesman Munich’s Franz Josef Airport, Germany’s second largest airport.

Pruemm said an earlier statement by federal police that the laptop had been confiscated turned out to be inaccurate. He said the man took his laptop and left the security area before it could be put through the security device a second time…

More than 100 flights were delayed, police said.

The coppers said they get a number of false positives every day. Something as simple as his after-shave could have set off the explosive detection device.

A number of reports noted it looked more like he was a businessman who hurried along to catch his flight – and did – rather than someone attempting to escape detention.

Click the photo for the article!

Click here after you guess.

Har! Did you guess correctly?

Thanks, Jägermeister

A stolen state government laptop computer contains personal information about more than 1 million Oklahoma residents, officials.

The state Department of Human Services said the laptop, stolen from a state employee’s vehicle in Oklahoma City on April 3, has not yet been recovered, The Oklahoman newspaper reported…

Despite the reassurances, others said the potential for the spread of personal information held on the computer is greater than officials have acknowledged because the data was not encrypted…

A DHS spokesman told the Oklahoman the computer held the names and Social Security numbers for about a million people who use such state programs as Medicaid, childcare assistance, food stamps and disability coverage.

We should probably just set up a category for “stolen government laptop with unencrypted data” – call it Stupid Government Trick or some such.

The computer, which was not encrypted, went missing during a recent exercise in Britain.

It was being used by the Signals Regiment – who were attached to the elite force based in Hereford.

According to a source, it held sensitive information about the regiment’s military and counter-terrorism manoeuvres.

The loss came to light after military chiefs carried out a routine audit of kit and realised the computer was missing…But Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said the loss was “deeply concerning”.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “We can confirm that we are investigating the possible loss of a hard drive, containing only unclassified information which was being used on a training exercise. We are carrying out our inquiries into what happened.”

Don’t you just love that stiff upper lip crappola? Maybe if they screamed bloody murder incompetent IT security management might be diminished?

When a thief opens your laptop, he could get a shock when it starts to shout “Help, I’ve been stolen!” or, perhaps, something ruder. But that’s one of the options provided by Front Door Software’s $30 Retriever program for Windows XP and Vista.

The software displays your contact details and lets you make the finder or thief an offer, such as “$50 for my safe return”. However, if you log on to a web site to say your PC is missing or stolen, that message will appear in a red and yellow on the laptop’s screen. It reappears every 30 seconds, to be really annoying. You also get the option to switch on a second password prompt.

In the background, Retriever tries to connect via Wi-Fi to report its loss.

And now it has the option to sing out a pre-recorded message: “Help, this laptop is reported lost or stolen. If you are not my owner, please report me now.” If you want something stronger, you can record it yourself.

I think I would have it shout. “Stop me. I’m being used for child porngraphy!”

Saving the children always works in Congress. Har!