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Thursday, February 1, 2007
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The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance
technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than
previously has been disclosed.
Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents
conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of
thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according
to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be
queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.
Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000.
It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet
monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done,
according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.
Call it the vacuum-cleaner approach. It's employed when police have
obtained a court order and an Internet service provider can't "isolate
the particular person or IP address" because of technical constraints,
says Paul Ohm,
a former trial attorney at the Justice Department's Computer Crime and
Intellectual Property Section. (An Internet Protocol address is a
series of digits that can identify an individual computer.)
That kind of full-pipe surveillance can record all Internet traffic,
including Web browsing--or, optionally, only certain subsets such as
all e-mail messages flowing through the network. Interception typically
takes place inside an Internet provider's network at the junction point
of a router or network switch.
The technique came to light at the Search & Seizure in the Digital Age
symposium held at Stanford University's law school on Friday. Ohm, who
is now a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and
Richard Downing, a CCIPS assistant deputy chief, discussed it during
the symposium.
10:40:38 PM 
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I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI. Hoi Polloi writes "Wired News has a series starting on internet crime. The first piece they have up covers the story of a cybercrook who specialized in credit card fraud. Caught in a sting operation in November of 2002, the man who identified himself as 'El Mariachi' on message boards would lead a double life for the next two years working for the FBI. As he reported on credit card scammers, dodged his former associates, and stopped criminals from defrauding the 2004 presidential campaign, he also tried to keep his life together. A fascinating tale that looks at the face of modern crime, and crime-stopping techniques." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
10:29:02 PM
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A reader sent me a link to a new patent application by Microsoft. Not the Bluej one, which has been in the news and which Microsoft, commendably, has withdrawn,
but another one, for what seemed to me to be a modular operating
system, "System and method for delivery of a modular operating system".
Microsoft and modular are two words I wouldn't normally associate
with one another, so I thought maybe I'd misunderstood it. Heaven only
knows, patent applications are generally written to confuse, not
illuminate, and so I sent it to Dr. Stupid to ask if he'd please
explain it to me. He did, and his explanation was so interesting, I
asked if I could share it with you.
As best as I can
understand it, it's not an attempted patent on a modular system per se.
That obviously wouldn't fly. As he points out, it's not new. The patent
relates to a method of delivery of an operating system where
you start off with a very basic operating system, a kind of crippled
starter edition, and then you pick and choose (and purchase) additional
functionality, with DRM used to make sure you don't self-help. It's
like modular copyleft, turning the advantages of GNU/Linux --
modularity there increases what you can do and what you can add and how
well everything works -- and instead turns the concept on its head by
using modularity plus DRM to restrict and contain and enforce.
10:03:10 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 3/4/07; 10:49:27 AM.
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