Category: News

Electronic Pickpocketing

Coolest new mode of theft in awhile:

Credit card issuers, along with the U.S. State Department, have begun installing radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in credit cards and passports because the technology holds more data than magnetic stripes and can be read quicker.

But, that convenience, experts warn, can also put people at risk of having their information taken.

“I wouldn’t walk around in public with my cards exposed like that,” said Walt Augustinowicz, founder of ID Stronghold. “It’s too easy to do.”

RFID chips are commonly found in cards used to raise gates in parking garages and unlock doors at businesses. All one has to do is simply swipe the card in front of a reader.

Within the last few years, that same technology has been introduced to credit cards and U.S. passports, potentially putting holders at risk of being ripped off.

It doesn’t matter if the cards are kept in a wallet or a purse since they can transmit through them when prompted by a RFID reader, which are for sale on eBay.

Augustinowicz said it amounts to electronic pickpocketing.

“[At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport], where you’ve got lots of crowds and a lot of people moving back and forth, no one is going to think anything of you walking by them with a briefcase with a higher-powered reader in it,” he said.

Using free software, he showed what hackers when using a RFID reader on a credit card. The account number and expiration date pop up on the computer screen almost instantaneously after the reader gets within a few inches of the card.

The only credit cards that are vulnerable are those that allow users to tap or pass a reader to pay rather than swiping. Some might also have a symbol on them that indicate they transmit.

Google informs users of Facebooks info-trapping

Google and Facebook are working toward the same ends: they both want to be the place you start your online activity, stick around for awhile and discover other things through. Google started with search and then mail and messaging and is now adding social network features while Facebook started with social network features and is now adding email and messaging.

Both companies are notorious for allegedly being loose with users personal information, giving them an interesting Coke vs Pepsi style marketing war when trying to convince the consumer that they are the better choice.

Here is what you are shown when you try to import your Gmail contacts information into Facebook:

iOS 4 finally goes online

After failing to meet the projected date for the latest release of Apples mobile operating system, the company has finally delivered a week later.

Apple plays Software Updates the way I play Just The Tip… they withhold even the basics for weeks, promising an upgrade, leaving our mouths to water with anticipation for something that should have been included on day one and then when we finally get it, its like a party instead of an anti-climactic let down. Well played, Jobs. I know the technique well…

FINALLY we can have the luxury of running more than one application at a time on the iPad (like listen to music and surf the web. I’m spelling it out for history to reflect how ridiculous it was that in 2010, a major electronics company actually released a wildly popular product that made you choose between tasks like listening to god damn music and browsing websites).

FINALLY I can make folders. Yes… the ability to make god damn folders on the iPad is one of the new features being rolled out today. This is pathetic.

Also some new stuff for the iPhone. idk.

AT&T is fighting for their right to ban class action lawsuits

The Supreme Court is hearing a case that affects you but you haven’t heard about: AT&T Mobility vs. Concepcion. The LA Times reports that if the Supreme Court rule in favor of AT&T, any business that issues a contract to customers would be able to prevent them from joining class-action lawsuits. The Times says this would “[take] away arguably the most powerful legal tool available to the little guy.”

Courts in California and elsewhere have ruled that bans on class-action lawsuits within a contract are unconscionable and contrary to public policy, but California says a lot of things that aren’t true and have no real constitutional grounding, so that’s not a whole lot of help.

My position is of course that I want to be able to sue whoever I want (when a valid wrong has taken place), but the logic and freedom side of my brain reminds me that this is not a ban on lawsuits at large – just a decision over whether a person has the right to agree not to sue a company.

As a company, I would of course want the right to say “you can only receive my service if you don’t sue me”, but as a consumer I want to have every service open to me while retaining the right to stick it to the man if something legit goes down – or just if some hippie douchebag is able to convince a hippie douchebag court that said corporation is evil and should pay for some grave injustice that is really nothing but a nitpick.

The details of this case make it all even stickier…

Vincent and Liza Concepcion sued AT&T in 2006 after signing up for wireless service that they’d been told included free cellphones. The Concepcions alleged that they and other Californians had been defrauded by the company because the phones actually came with various charges.

Well when you put it THAT way, hell ya they should have sued. What’s described here is a total scam. If they can prove it’s a total scam in court then they should get PAID. If they can’t then AT&T is off the hook. That’s how it SHOULD work but we all know the system isn’t as truth-based as it should be, which is what keeps me torn on the issue.

AT&T asked that the District court throw out the lawsuit because the contract the litigator signed said “if you sign this then you can’t fkkn sue us”, but California said that kind of ban violates state law and is not preempted by federal law SO it went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where it was upheld, forcing AT&T to go ask the Supreme Court to step in.

Public Citizen’s Gupta said consumers can expect similar treatment from other companies if the Supreme Court rules in AT&T’s favor.

“If the court decides that the federal law trumps state law in this case, there’s no limit to what companies could do,” Gupta said. “All companies and employers would be able to put arbitration clauses in contracts that prevent people from joining class actions.”

Briefs supporting the right to class actions have been filed by a number of consumer groups and civil rights organizations, including the Consumer Federation of America and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

On the opposing side — that is, backing AT&T’s case — are other telecom companies, as well as such well-heeled corporate interests as the American Bankers Assn., the Financial Services Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The case is going on right now and probably won’t be decided until next year with no clue as to which way it will get decided, however T-Mobile, Verizon, Comcast and AT&T have all tried this argument in lower courts before and lost their cases.

Good News: “Minority Report” (Movie) reality might be coming soon

Alternate Headline: Scientific Study suggests precognition may be possible.

If you never saw Minority Report, it’s a Tom Cruise movie where he plays a cop who arrests people before they commit the crime they’re being arrested for based on reports printed from data mined from 3 physics kept in a pool. yeay!

In one experiment subjects, all of whom were students, were briefly shown a word list and then asked to recall as many as they could. Later, they were asked to copy a list of words randomly selected from the same list by a computer. The surprising result of this experiment was that in the recall section of the experiment the subjects recalled at a significantly higher rate words they were later asked to type, even though they had no way of knowing which words would be on the list.

In another experiment subjects were shown images of two curtains alongside each other on a computer screen and told one was concealing a picture (sometimes of an erotic nature), while the other concealed a blank screen. They were then asked to click on the one they “felt” was hiding the picture. When the curtain was selected it was opened to reveal what was behind it. This was repeated 36 times for each subject, and the picture positions were computer-selected and random.

In the 100 sessions subjects consistently selected the correct curtain 53.1 percent of the time for the erotic pictures, significantly over the 50 percent expected by pure chance. For the non-erotic pictures, the success rate was only 49.8 percent.

In a third experiment Bem reversed a common test in which subjects are shown one of the words “Ugly” or “Beautiful,” and then shown a picture of something unpleasant (such as a snake), or pleasant (such as a puppy or kitten), and the subject is asked to quickly decide if the picture is pleasant or unpleasant. In Bem’s reversal experiment the subject was shown the picture first and was required to respond as fast as possible and was then shown the word, which was randomly selected by the computer.

Airport Pat Downs

Everyone is freaking out about the TSA pat downs and body scanners, I think because it’s just a slow news period. I don’t get what the huge deal is. The horror stories are worth reporting but the issue at large kindo bores me. I also don’t get why so many conservatives are crazed over this. If its safety then its safety. I’d rather be alive than not patted down like a criminal.

I’m flying into Orlando for Thanksgiving and aside from accusations of TSA searching a woman “because of her breasts” they may be fixing their security hassles by dumping TSA all together and going private.

So far the best stories are the poor cancer survivor who had to remove her fake boob and the even worse bladder cancer survivor who was left soaked in his own urine after a clumsy are careless pat down.

Fark had this headline: TSA responds to the “don’t touch my junk” video by arresting anyone filming TSA screenings as the vids may be useful to terrorists and not because they may embarrass the TSA or anything.

Ann Coulter, in typical fashion suggests “how bout we just look for the terrorists” and asks what we’re going to do when one tries to sneak a bomb through their anal cavity… oy…

UPDATE: I was just shown this in response to this post. very clever protest… A shirt with the 4th Amendment printed in laced metal so it shows up on body scans… ha!

Why do we STILL have to sit through FBI warnings on DVDs?

A writer sends this to Tech columnist David Pogue and it says it all. There is nothing to add. There can be nothing to add. I can’t, Pogue can’t – this sums up the insanity pretty perfectly:

Why, why, why is it still necessary for every single DVD that I buy to have the F.B.I. warning at the beginning? Why can’t they just put the warning on the DVD box? Oh wait— they already do. So why, EVERY TIME I want to watch a movie or TV show that I legitimately purchased, do I have to spend 30 seconds being told yet again that, if I choose to copy the DVD, the F.B.I. is going to come after me?

It’s an odd way of saying, “Thanks for buying this DVD.”

Incidentally, I live in Canada. The F.B.I. can’t do anything to me anyway. Still, the warning is on every disc I buy.

VHS tapes had this warning, too, but at least you could fast-forward through it. With DVDs, you can’t skip or even fast-forward through the warning. You have to watch it every single time you watch the disc. Click Menu during the warning, and you’re told that “this operation is not available.” If I fall asleep watching a movie, and the DVD player shuts itself off, I have to watch the warning all over again. If I buy a DVD set of a 24-episode TV show, I have to watch the warning 24 times (unless I watch multiple episodes in one sitting).

It’s a good thing the music industry doesn’t do the same thing. Imagine if every time you wanted to listen to a CD or a song from iTunes, you had to sit through an announcement about the consequences of illegal sharing.

Okay, I exaggerated the “no more to say” part cuz Pogue does add this bit which I’ve been saying for at least a decade:

I don’t understand why some movie studio doesn’t decide to become the Good Guys of the industry. Get rid of all those annoyances, all the lawyer-driven absurdities, and market the heck out of it. Be like the breath-of-fresh air new airline (as JetBlue was in its day) or cellphone company (like T-Mobile, the only company that drops your monthly rate after you’ve repaid the subsidy on your phone). Dare to be different — and win a lot of customer loyalty as a result.

California borrows $40M a day to pay unemployment

California borrows $40 million a day to pay unemployment…

a DAY…. every day… 40 million dollars… not to finance a war or balance the budget or find a cure for cancer. 40 million dollars, borrowed – meaning money the state does not have – to pay people for not working…

“With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers, California is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance.”