Eideard

Phil DuBois defended Phil Zimmermann & PGP against the Feds

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.

Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well…

Which is about what I’d expect from a fossil appointed by a tool.

Colorado Springs attorney Phil Dubois, who once represented PGP creator Phil Zimmermann, now finds himself fighting the feds over encryption a second time.

“I hope to get a stay of execution of this order so we can file an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals,” Ramona Fricosu’s attorney, Phil Dubois, said this afternoon. “I think it’s a matter of national importance. It should not be treated as though it’s just another day in Fourth Amendment litigation.”

Today’s ruling from Blackburn sided with the U.S. Department of Justice [and Homeland Insecurity, the TSA and just about every Brown Shirt in the Kool Aid Party] which argued, as CNET reported last summer, that Americans’ Fifth Amendment right to remain silent doesn’t apply to their encryption passphrases…

The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for at least the last 15 years arguing the merits of either approach…

Many principled Americans have confronted the threat of contempt of court in the course of defending civil rights and civil liberties hated by the least principled segment of American jurisprudence and politics. Opportunism governs the mindset of small-minded bureaucrats — whether the question is one of war and peace or privacy and testimony.

I don’t expect them to change. I not about to start cooperating, either.

WiFi and USB have both become inexpensive and ubiquitous connectivity solutions, so the idea of exploiting them both at the same time a single device makes sense. IOGEAR’s latest take on the theme is its Wireless 4-Port USB Sharing Station, which allows up to four USB peripherals (external storage, camera, printer, etc.) to be shared over a WiFi network and in the process provides a recipe for an uncluttered desktop environment.

While some devices come WiFi-enabled out of the box (printers especially), most of them rely on cords. Resembling an ordinary WiFi router, the IOGEAR Wireless Sharing Station in fact requires a WiFi router to establish a WLAN within the station’s range. After plugging USB gadgets into its four ports, they become accessible to PCs, smartphones, tablets and other devices.

An office environment with shareable multi-function printers, or external hard drives, seems to be the most obvious application of IOGEAR’s device. Another likely application is a simple surveillance system, made up of a USB-powered video recording device accessible via WiFi when plugged into the station. Other USB devices that could be shared include speakers, flash memories, memory card readers, MP3 players, or even USB toys.

I can’t wait to play with one of these. This may replace the gaming switch I use as a wireless hub for my entertainment center.

I am not a Democrat, because I have no idea what their economic policies are; And I am not a Republican, because I know precisely what their economic policies are.

Barry Ritholtz – on Surveillance, Bloomberg Radio, this morning with Tom Keene.

Applications developers looking for a low power, small form factor computing solution that won’t break the bank will no doubt appreciate the DreamPlug from Globalscale Technologies. Expanding on the company’s GuruPlug system, the new low-profile plug computer is powered by a Marvell processor, has half a gigabyte of DDR2 RAM and a generous helping of onboard micro-SD flash memory to store the Linux kernal and root system files. Physical connectivity and expansion options include USB, eSATA, JTAG and UART and the unit also has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities.

Unlike the similarly compact Jack PC, the 4.3 x 2.73 x 1.9-inch (110 x 69.5 x 48.5mm) DreamPlug doesn’t offer onboard graphics. This always-on computing solution would therefore most likely find itself being used for such things as high-end audio systems or media servers, home and industrial automation, network storage and monitoring and security/surveillance systems…

The last-named being an area where I used to spend some time earning a living. Wish I had hardware like this available, this small, this cheap, back in the day.

Connectivity takes the form of a couple of Gigabit Ethernet ports, an eSATA port, a couple of USB 2.0 ports, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR. Both analog and digital audio output are on offer, with S/PDIF audio out taking care of the digital and analog being provided by stereo headphone and mic jacks.

The DreamPlug is far from power hungry, having a draw of under 5W – which is not quite as energy efficient as the Plug PC or the Trim-Slice but it’s still pretty impressive.

I can see hobbyists loading this critter up with their favorite Linux distro and running a media center or a bank of webcams. You can set it up with a keyboard, mouse and monitor – then take the externals away and communicate with whatever system you’ve designed – through Bluetooth or WiFi.

Pricing starts at $149.

The U.S. Army could be streaming surveillance video images from unmanned planes to solders’ cellphones in about two years…

The Army remains committed to the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) as the main means for disseminating video images to the battlefield, a big program that is still under development and should be fielded in 2014, said Tim Owings, deputy program manager for Army unmanned aerial systems.

But technology developments and rapid advances in encryption software mean smaller-scale self-contained 4G networks could also be an option for allowing troops to see video images in about two years, Owings told reporters at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference…

“We’re probably going to look at that. We’d be somewhat short-sighted not to,” Owings said about streaming to smart phones, although he noted that the Army does not have a formal requirement for such a system.

Owings said new encryption advances mean that such systems would allow “pretty darn secure” transmission of data in a very limited area, and they would be fairly inexpensive since they could be used with commercially available smart phones…

Army equipment often requires extensive training for troops, but most recruits are already familiar with so-called smart phones, cell phones that can receive video images and photographs, which could reduce training costs, Owings said.

Part of such implementation is getting the officer corps to be as technically hip as the incoming grunts. And, I suppose, keeping the bean counters from offering more than 600% markups to their favorite military-industrial supermarkets.

The rapid rate of technological and social change means the future comes crashing towards us faster than ever before, says visionary science fiction author William Gibson.

“In the 1960s I think that in some sense the present was actually about three or four years long,” he said, “because in three or four years relatively little would change.”

That stood in sharp contrast to late 2010, he said, when big changes had become a daily occurrence.

“Now the present is the length of a news cycle some days,” he said in an interview with BBC News.

That ferocious rate of change made writing about the present day exciting, he said, and explained why his current novel, Zero History, is set around about now.

“The present is really of no width whatever,” he said…

For instance, he said, the flying drones depicted in Zero History and used for surveillance have the potential to inflict big changes very quickly once they become cheap and ubiquitous.

“They are actually going to change the landscapes of cities,” he said.

“People in tall buildings, particularly in cities like New York or Chicago, have been living lives of utter privacy quite unconcerned that anyone might be looking in the window.”

“That’s just not going to be the case anymore,” he said…

Big Brother will be watching 24/7. With the full collaboration of our legislatures, politicians and pundits, media and most ignorant voters. Security is the watchword for cowards.

Ready to give out parking tickets

Patricia Pantano, education director of the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, between Española and Chimayó on N.M. 76, said the raid occurred Sept. 21 during the lunch hour.

“We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower,” she said. “Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating.”

After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school’s driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.

Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school’s greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.

“As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story,” she said…

Some parents, who did not want to be named, said they, too, were concerned about the raid on their children’s school.

Pantano said she did not want to make too big an issue out of the raid, but questioned why such a commotion was necessary when anyone who asked would have been given a tour of the greenhouses.

“We’re sitting here as a teaching staff, always short on money, and we’re thinking, ‘Gosh, all the money it takes to fly that helicopter and hire all those people, it would be great to have this for education.’ ”

Let’s all be glad we live in the land of Liberty, a nation that has its priorities in order.

Har!

Traditional surveillance cameras can be of great assistance to law enforcement officers for a range of scenarios—canvassing a crowd for criminal activity during a Fourth of July celebration, searching for who left a suitcase bomb beneath a bench, or trying to pick out a terrorist who has fled the scene and blended into a teeming throng in the subway. But there are shortfalls. For starters, once they zoom in on a specific point of interest, they lose visual contact with the rest of the scene.

But a new video surveillance system currently being developed by the Department of Homeland Security…may soon give law enforcement an extra set of eyes. The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (or ISIS) takes new video camera and image-stitching technology and bolts it to a ceiling, mounts it on a roof, or fastens it to a truck-mounted telescoping mast.

Like a bug-eyed fisheye lens, ISIS sees v-e-r-y wide. But that’s where the similarity ends. Whereas a typical fisheye lens distorts the image and can only provide limited resolution, video from ISIS is perfectly detailed, edge-to-edge. That’s because the video is made from a series of individual cameras stitched into a single, live view—like a high-res video quilt.

“Coverage this sweeping, with detail this fine, requires a very high pixel count,” says program manager Dr. John Fortune, of S&T’s Infrastructure and Geophysical Division, “ISIS has a resolution capability of 100 megapixels.” That’s as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare. You can zoom in close…and closer…without losing clarity.

The stitching together of several images isn’t exactly cutting-edge magic…ISIS is quilting video—in real time! And a unique interface allows you to maintain the full field of view, while a focal point of your choice can be magnified…

As in any aspect of security control – the critical quality is who is in charge? What will they do with what they see and learn? And the ever-popular – who is charged with protecting individual privacy rights?

A team of amateur sky watchers has pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the debut flight of the nation’s first robotic spaceplane, finding clues that suggest the military craft is engaged in the development of spy satellites rather than space weapons, which some experts have suspected but the Pentagon strongly denies.

Last month, the unmanned successor to the space shuttle blasted off from Florida on its debut mission but attracted little public notice because no one knew where it was going or what it was doing. The spaceship, known as the X-37B, was shrouded in operational secrecy, even as civilian specialists reported that it might go on mysterious errands for as long as nine months before zooming back to earth and touching down on a California runway…

Now, the amateur sky watchers have succeeded in tracking the stealthy object for the first time and uncovering clues that could back up the surveillance theory. Ted Molczan, a team member in Toronto, said the military spacecraft was passing over the same region on the ground once every four days, a pattern he called “a common feature of U.S. imaging reconnaissance satellites.”

In six sightings, the team has found that the craft orbits as far north as 40 degrees latitude, just below New York City. In theory, on a clear night, an observer in the suburbs might see the X-37B as a bright star moving across the southern sky…

Mr. Molczan said team members in Canada and South Africa made independent observations of the X-37B on Thursday and, as it turned out, caught an earlier glimpse of the orbiting spaceship late last month from the United States. Weeks of sky surveys paid off when the team members Kevin Fetter and Greg Roberts managed to observe the craft from Brockville, Ontario, and Cape Town.

Mr. Molczan said the X-37B was orbiting about 255 miles up — standard for a space shuttle — and circling the planet once every 90 minutes or so…

The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office leads the X-37B program for what it calls the “development and fielding of select Defense Department combat support and weapons systems…”

Brian Weedon of the Secure World Foundation…questioned the current mission’s secrecy.

“If a bunch of amateurs can find it,” Mr. Weedon said, “so can our adversaries.”

Har!

On-the-job training as a crook?

Two New York Diamond District wholesalers were so desperate to get out of debt that they hired three men to dress up as Hasidic Jews and rob their store at gunpoint, said NYC police.

Investigators became suspicious after the 2008 robbery when they discovered that the two owners, Atul Shah, 48, and Mahaveer Kankariya, 43, took out a new insurance policy just before the heist.

One of the phony bandits is currently being questioned at the Midtown North stationhouse, sources told the NY Post.

The whole thing was set up,” one source told the paper, adding that enhanced video surveillance footage showed the owners stealing the jewelry prior to the fake heist.

The dimwits thought they’d turned off all the surveillance cameras.

The second robber is apparently still at large.

Har! Dumb enough for dumb crooks of the week.