http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html
Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges. Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough (pop 142,000).
Monday, December 7, 2009
Fear and Public Perception
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/fear_and_public.html
This is interesting. It goes along with why people are more afraid of swine flu (about 3,000 US deaths) than the regular flu (about 30,000 annual US deaths).
This 1996 interview with psychiatrist Robert DuPont was part of a Frontline program called "Nuclear Reaction."
He's talking about the role fear plays in the perception of nuclear power. It's a lot of the sorts of things I say, but particularly interesting is this bit on familiarity and how it reduces fear:
You see, we sited these plants away from metropolitan areas to "protect the public" from the dangers of nuclear power. What we did when we did that was move the plants away from the people, so they became unfamiliar. The major health effect, adverse health effect of nuclear power is not radiation. It's fear. And by siting them away from the people, we insured that that would be maximized. If we're serious about health in relationship to nuclear power, we would put them in downtown, big cities, so people would see them all the time. That is really important, in terms of reducing the fear. Familiarity is the way fear is reduced. No question. It's not done intellectually. It's not done by reading a book. It's done by being there and seeing it and talking to the people who work there.So, among other reasons, terrorism is scary because it's so rare. When it's more common -- England during the Troubles, Israel today -- people have a more rational reaction to it.
My recent essay on fear and overreaction.
This is interesting. It goes along with why people are more afraid of swine flu (about 3,000 US deaths) than the regular flu (about 30,000 annual US deaths).
"Lawful Spying" Price Lists Leaked
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/06/1724208/Lawful-Spying-Price-Lists-Leaked?art_pos=12
"Wired has a story about how the site Cryptome.org leaked the price lists for 'lawful spying' activities of Yahoo and other companies, and subsequently received a DMCA takedown notice from Yahoo. The documents, however, are still posted online, and in them you can learn, for instance, that IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."
I'll be picking on Yahoo here as an example, but there are also guides for Yahoo, Cox, SBC-Ameritech, Cingular, Cricket, Nextel, Pacific Telesis, ATT, Sprint, and GTE. I'd like to point out that upon reading the guide it seems like they are more compiling with laws. I couldn't find anything in the guide that proved they offer information without a warrant. That's certainly not proof that they don't though. However, they did issue a DMCA takedown notice about the guide, which inherently makes them evil. This info was orginally attempted via a FOIA request. However Yahoo objected to it, and said, "Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,". In other words the public knowing the truth would hurt Yahoo.
Excerpts from the PDF guide:
What Information Can Yahoo! Provide?
Basic subscriber records: approx. $20 for the first ID, $10 per ID thereafter
Basic Group Information (including information about moderators): approx. $20 for a group with a single moderator
Contents of subscriber accounts, including email: approx. $30-$40 per user
Contents of Groups: approx. $40 - $80 per group
"Wired has a story about how the site Cryptome.org leaked the price lists for 'lawful spying' activities of Yahoo and other companies, and subsequently received a DMCA takedown notice from Yahoo. The documents, however, are still posted online, and in them you can learn, for instance, that IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."
I'll be picking on Yahoo here as an example, but there are also guides for Yahoo, Cox, SBC-Ameritech, Cingular, Cricket, Nextel, Pacific Telesis, ATT, Sprint, and GTE. I'd like to point out that upon reading the guide it seems like they are more compiling with laws. I couldn't find anything in the guide that proved they offer information without a warrant. That's certainly not proof that they don't though. However, they did issue a DMCA takedown notice about the guide, which inherently makes them evil. This info was orginally attempted via a FOIA request. However Yahoo objected to it, and said, "Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,". In other words the public knowing the truth would hurt Yahoo.
Excerpts from the PDF guide:
What Information Can Yahoo! Provide?
- Subscriber Information
- Subscriber information supplied by the user at the time of registration, including name, location, date account created, and services used.
- IP addresses associated with log-ins to a user account are available for up to one year.
- Registration IP address data available for IDs registered since 1999.
- Subscriber information supplied by the user at the time of registration, including name, location, date account created, and services used.
- Yahoo! Mail (including email associated with specific properties such as Personals, Small Business, Domains, and Flickr)
- Any email available in the user’s mail account, including IP address of computer used to send email.
- Yahoo! is not able to search for or produce deleted emails.
- Note that Yahoo! now hosts two new email domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com.
- Any email available in the user’s mail account, including IP address of computer used to send email.
- Yahoo! Chat/Messenger
- Friends List for Yahoo! Messenger.
- Time, date, and IP address logs for Chat and Messenger use within the prior 45-60 days.
- Archives of Messenger communications may be available on the user’s computer if the user has chosen to archive communications.
- Archives of Web Messenger communications may be stored on Yahoo! servers if at least one party to the communication chose to archive communications.
- Friends List for Yahoo! Messenger.
Basic subscriber records: approx. $20 for the first ID, $10 per ID thereafter
Basic Group Information (including information about moderators): approx. $20 for a group with a single moderator
Contents of subscriber accounts, including email: approx. $30-$40 per user
Contents of Groups: approx. $40 - $80 per group
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/01/1919243/Sprint-Revealed-Customer-GPS-Data-8-Million-Times?art_pos=9
An anonymous reader sends along Chris Soghoian's blog entry revealing that Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' GPS location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. The data point comes from a closed industry conference that Soghoian attended, at which Paul Taylor, Electronic Surveillance Manager at Sprint Nextel, said: "[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in." Soghoian's post details the laws around disclosure of wiretap and other interception data — one of which the Department of Justice has been violating since 2004 — and calls for more disclosure of the levels of all forms of surveillance.
An anonymous reader sends along Chris Soghoian's blog entry revealing that Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' GPS location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. The data point comes from a closed industry conference that Soghoian attended, at which Paul Taylor, Electronic Surveillance Manager at Sprint Nextel, said: "[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in." Soghoian's post details the laws around disclosure of wiretap and other interception data — one of which the Department of Justice has been violating since 2004 — and calls for more disclosure of the levels of all forms of surveillance.
Somali Pirates Open Up a "Stock Exchange"
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/02/0130216/Somali-Pirates-Open-Up-a-Stock-Exchange?art_pos=1
'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. 'I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,' she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. 'I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the "company."
'Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 "maritime companies" and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,' Mohammed [a wealthy former pirate who took a Reuters reporter to the facility] said. ... Piracy investor Sahra Ibrahim, a 22-year-old divorcee, was lined up with others waiting for her cut of a ransom pay-out after one of the gangs freed a Spanish tuna fishing vessel. 'I am waiting for my share after I contributed a rocket-propelled grenade for the operation,' she said, adding that she got the weapon from her ex-husband in alimony. 'I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the "company."
SETI@Home Install Leads To School Tech Supervisor's Resignation
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/02/2029202/SETIHome-Install-Leads-To-School-Tech-Supervisors-Resignation?art_pos=3
"Apparently the most prolific of users in the SETI@Home community has resigned his job as a school technology supervisor after it was revealed he had the software installed on some 5000 school machines. The school claims to have lost $1 million in upkeep on the affected machines."
"Apparently the most prolific of users in the SETI@Home community has resigned his job as a school technology supervisor after it was revealed he had the software installed on some 5000 school machines. The school claims to have lost $1 million in upkeep on the affected machines."
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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