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U.S. Marshals Seize Cops’ Spying Records to Keep Them From the ACLU | Threat Level | WIRED

2014 Jun 4, 6:08

"A routine request in Florida for records detailing the use of a surveillance tool known as stingray turned extraordinary Tuesday when the U.S. Marshals Service seized the documents before local police could release them."

Also what about the part where the PD reveals that its been using the stingray a bunch without telling any court and blames that on the manufacturer’s NDA.

PermalinkCommentstechnical law security phone

In Depth Review: New NSA Documents Expose How Americans Can Be Spied on Without A Warrant

2013 Jun 21, 10:43

What It All Means: All Your Communications are Belong to U.S. In sum, if you use encryption they’ll keep your data forever. If you use Tor, they’ll keep your data for at least five years. If an American talks with someone outside the US, they’ll keep your data for five years. If you’re talking to your attorney, you don’t have any sense of privacy. And the NSA can hand over you information to the FBI for evidence of any crime, not just terrorism. All without a warrant or even a specific FISA order.

Not sure if this is saying all Tor data is collected or saying if someone uses Tor then start collecting that someone’s communication.

PermalinkCommentstechnical legal tor nsa eff spying security privacy

(via HTTPSTER T-Shirt) Maybe for Eric?

2012 Aug 8, 3:14


(via HTTPSTER T-Shirt)

Maybe for Eric?

PermalinkCommentshumor tshirt shirt gift http technical

Sprint loaded spyware on its Android phones

2011 Nov 30, 4:22

“TechCrunch and others are reporting that a program called “Carrier IQ” that comes pre-installed on Sprint phones has some pretty amazing spyware capabilities, right down to keylogging everything you do on the phone.”

PermalinkCommentstechnical cell-phone privacy security

ILSpy - SharpDevelop Wiki

2011 Mar 28, 4:06"ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler. Development started after Red Gate announced that the free version of .NET Reflector would cease to exist by end of February 2011."PermalinkComments.net tools reflector c# development csharp dotnet technical tool

BBC News - Polar bears get the better of spy cameras

2011 Mar 10, 6:14Polar bears destroy hiddern cameras (filming them for Science!) It is a well known fact that polar bears are very protective of their rights to privacy.
PermalinkCommentsvideo science nature animals bbc humor

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List | Threat Level | Wired.com

2009 Dec 7, 5:15"Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides law enforcement agencies has leaked onto the web." ... "Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and service providers. But of all those companies, it appears to be Yahoo’s lawyers alone who have issued a DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome demanding the document be removed."PermalinkCommentsprivacy security copyright yahoo dmca internet web surveillance

Platonic Ideals in Anathem and The Atrocity Archives

2009 Apr 7, 11:58
The Atrocity ArchivesThe Jennifer MorgueAnathem

This past week I finished Anathem and despite the intimidating physical size of the book (difficult to take and read on the bus) I became very engrossed and was able to finish it in several orders of magnitude less time than what I spent on the Baroque Cycle. Whereas reading the Baroque Cycle you can imagine Neal Stephenson sifting through giant economic tomes (or at least that's where my mind went whenever the characters began to explain macro-economics to one another), in Anathem you can see Neal Stephenson staying up late pouring over philosophy of mathematics. When not exploring philosophy, Anathem has an appropriate amount of humor, love interests, nuclear bombs, etc. as you might hope from reading Snow Crash or Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed Anathem.

On the topic of made up words: I get made up words for made up things, but there's already a name for cell-phone in English: its "cell-phone". The narrator notes that the book has been translated into English so I guess I'll blame the fictional translator. Anyway, I wasn't bothered by the made up words nearly as much as some folk. Its a good thing I'm long out of college because I can easily imagine confusing the names of actual concepts and people with those from the book, like Hemn space for Hamming distance. Towards the beginning, the description of slines and the post-post-apocalyptic setting reminded me briefly of Idiocracy.

Recently, I've been reading everything of Charles Stross that I can, including about a month ago, The Jennifer Morgue from the surprisingly awesome amalgamation genre of spy thriller and Lovecraft horror. Its the second in a series set in a universe in which magic exists as a form of mathematics and follows Bob Howard programmer/hacker, cube dweller, and begrudging spy who works for a government agency tasked to suppress this knowledge and protect the world from its use. For a taste, try a short story from the series that's freely available on Tor's website, Down on the Farm.

Coincidentally, both Anathem and the Bob Howard series take an interest in the world of Platonic ideals. In the case of Anathem (without spoiling anything) the universe of Platonic ideals, under a different name of course, is debated by the characters to be either just a concept or an actual separate universe and later becomes the underpinning of major events in the book. In the Bob Howard series, magic is applied mathematics that through particular proofs or computations awakens/disturbs/provokes unnamed horrors in the universe of Platonic ideals to produce some desired effect in Bob's universe.

PermalinkCommentsatrocity archives neal stephenson jennifer morgue plato bob howard anathem

Remixes of the paranoid London police "anti-terror"/suspect your neighbours posters - Boing Boing

2009 Mar 26, 2:24PermalinkCommentshumor politics poster paranoia security via:boingboing.comments photoshop privacy

Gravity Bone

2009 Jan 29, 10:22Play this game now. Its like half of a delicious club sandwhich. Love the music. "To make it in Nuevos Aires, one has to have nerves of silk and the filthiest of hands. Mix together a batch of espionage, some high- speed car chases, fire-spewing assassins, and you've got one oven that'll never bake cookies again. We provide the pliers and you bring the moxie."PermalinkCommentsgame videogame quake gravity-bone humor spy espionage

Yellow Dots of Mystery: Is Your Printer Spying on You?

2008 Oct 23, 11:27Informative and humorous video on the topic of printer tracking dots. "Most color laser printers and color copiers are designed to print invisible tracking codes across every single printed page of their output. These codes reveal which machine produced a document and, in some cases, when the document was printed or copied."PermalinkCommentshumor video security privacy eff printer

In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough? | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

2007 Oct 31, 4:41ONN has a piece on how the government can help paranoid schizophrenics.PermalinkCommentsonion privacy humor video satire government

Awesome Movies Unknown to Me

2007 Aug 12, 2:50Thanks to Netflix I've been able to enjoy several movies that I'd never heard of.



Brick is a classic PI film set in a modern high school. Its fun figuring out which high school students correspond to which film noir archetypes.

Primer is a sci-fi movie but it doesn't focus on action or effects. Its like watching an excellent Twilight Zone episode. I hate to describe this any further for fear of giving something away.

The Amazing Screw-On Head is an animated version of the one shot comic. It feels like the 1800s precursor to the The Venture Bros. and stars Screw-On Head, a steam-punk robot head thing and Abe Lincoln's top spy for occult matters.

The Quiet Earth is the movie version of the book about a man who awakes one day to find himself alone(... or is he?) It was made in the 80s and in Australia but don't hold that against it.PermalinkCommentsscifi primer movie amazing screw-on head personal netflix brick the quiet earth

Kitten Captcha (MSR Asirra Project)

2007 Mar 16, 3:41This is a Microsoft research project that uses kittens to prove your humanity. This is very similar to something I've linked previously: http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/security/the_cutest_humantest_kittenauthPermalinkCommentscaptcha security spam microsoft research development tool free web
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