Month: May 2014

Wow… WordArt

Impressive. This guy actually uses WordArt on his “search engine”. Also… works only in IE? What year is this? 1997?

In the mood for a good laugh, I decided to take a trip to his webpage (http://letsnotbeevil.com/). The webpage turned out to be an embarrassment. I expected something at least somewhat modern-looking. However, what I found can only be described as garish. He states that the website is designed for Internet Explorer. How cute, someone who has failed to realize that the world has left Internet Explorer behind. Using Google Chrome, I navigated to his website to discover that it was a jumbled mess

Link (YourKickstarterSucks)
Link (Kickstarter)
Link (LetsNotBeEvil)

Do you want a government dicatorship?

… because this is how you get a government dictatorship

“The question is who decides [what to publish]. It seems clear, at least to me, that the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the government.”

Link (Techdirt)

DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners

(…) it appears the DOJ is trying to attack the idea of the reasonable expectation of privacy that has been the basis of the 4th Amendment in the US. They’re effectively arguing that since foreign governments might look at the info too, you should have no expectation of privacy in any communications with foreigners and thus you’ve waived all 4th Amendment protections in that content.

Link (Techdirt)

I smell a patent lawsuit

DPS recently published a tutorial on how to do portraits on a white background. How to do this isn’t anything new or innovative, and should be something most pro photographers know how to do.

The sad part is, Amazon has recently been granted a patent on how to do just this, so DPS could in theory be sued by Amazon for patent infringement. For something photographers have been doing for 50 years or more.

You Can Thank The CIA For The Return Of Polio

The return of polio is also due to an ill-informed anti-vaccine campaign — not one driven by people confused by a fraudulent study, but rather by the Taliban. Many of the new cases are in Pakistan and a variety of nearby countries. The Taliban has been arguing for a while that vaccinations and vaccination drives are really efforts by western intelligence and/or imperialism.

The problem is: the CIA basically confirmed that for them by using a fake vaccination campaign to find Osama bin Laden a few years ago. Suddenly, crazy rumors about vaccination programs simply being fronts for the US intelligence community weren’t just more reasonable, they were flat out confirmed. And, soon after that was all revealed, suddenly the rates of polio shot up? Right around the same time that polio vaccination workers started getting killed in Pakistan?

Link (Techdirt)

Economic fallout from the NSA scandal

This should be a clear example of why the US policy of spying on everyone everywhere, and having secret court orders forcing companies to reveal information isn’t in anyone’s best interest..

Germany’s black-red “grand coalition” government has now tightened the rules for awarding sensitive public IT contracts. In cases of doubt, suspicious companies will now be excluded from such contracts. And companies now have to sign documents to the effect that no contracts or laws oblige them — nor can they be coerced — to pass on confidential data to foreign secret services or security authorities.

The new rule would seem to be aimed primarily at American companies. These companies, as numerous Snowden documents reveal, regularly pass on information to the U.S. spy agencies. At the NSA, a separate Special Sources Operations department deals with cooperation with “strategic partners,” as agents call such companies. The companies say they are merely following the laws of the respective country, and so far this explanation has been accepted.

But since April, any company that cannot guarantee that foreign services or authorities will not obtain any of their data is being excluded from federal contracts in Germany. A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior said that the aim of the new rule is to prevent “the flow of data worth protecting to foreign security authorities.”

Link (Techdirt)

CIA: No more vaccination campaigns in spy operations

… at least not until next time

The administration’s response Friday said that under CIA policy, established by CIA Director John Brennan in August 2013, “the Agency will make no operational use of vaccination programs, which includes vaccination workers.” The letter also said the agency “will not seek to obtain or exploit DNA or other genetic material acquired through such programs.”

The cynic in me also notices how this new policy doesn’t really stop the CIA from setting up their own fake “vaccination programs”, just from using genuine vaccination programs.

Link (WaPo)

DOJ’s Tone Deaf Criminal Charges Against Chinese Hackers Helps No One, Opens US Officials Up To Similar Charges

(…)  people are already pointing out that by firing the opening shot with criminal charges, the DOJ may be opening the floodgates against the NSA, FBI and others for similar charges in other countries. Obviously, China will almost certainly hit back with charges — possibly even trying to arrest some folks in that country. But the ridiculousness of the situation may also lead other countries to levy charges against specific individuals within US intelligence — thereby making life a lot more difficult for US intelligence officials in the near future.

Link (Techdirt)

Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit

Last month, after Lavabit lost its appeal, we noted that the court avoided the major constitutional issues, focusing on how the company and its founder Ladar Levison mucked up procedural stuff early on, effectively barring him from raising the more serious constitutional issues on appeal. We pointed out that this was unfortunate on many levels, but also noted that this shows how important it is to get a good lawyer early on, rather than trying to handle things yourself. Levison has now written a more thorough explanation over at the Guardian, in which he seeks to explain why gag orders and other issues made it almost impossible for him to get good legal help, leading to the procedural issues later on

Link (Techdirt)