Category Archives: Security

Death by Disney

I have issues with Disney for a whole number of reasons. Perhaps someday I will create a page to explain. I think it all started with a book I read as a kid about the CIA’s use of Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Louie, etc. in Latin America propaganda. Not that I disagreed with the use of comic-books, but if you read the actual comics they distributed you would know what I mean.

Bruce Schneier writes about the DMCA review by the US Congress today.

Posts on his blog seem more and more factual and less opinionated, perhaps due to time or just the general issue of dealing with the firestorm that can follow from giving any perspective. On the other hand, his links to “good information” all point to groups who oppose some aspect of the DMCA. Anyway, I read through the links that Bruce provided and this section stood out to me:

    (3) As used in this subsection-

    (A) to “circumvent a technological measure”? means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

    (B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work”? if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

    17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(3).

I’ll try the trackback system again instead of posting directly.

FCC sued over IP wiretap rules

The Associated Press reports that “Privacy and technology groups asked the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday to overturn a Federal Communications Commission rule that expands wiretapping laws to cover Internet calls — or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Law enforcement agencies already can obtain a subpoena for the contents of VoIP calls from Internet access providers. But the FBI and others want the ability to capture the technology live and they want systems designed so it would be easy to do that. “

BBC halts Blackberry use

The Guardian reported today that RIM (of Blackberry fame) had to resolve an “obscure bug”, which caused the BBC to suspended use of the mobile devices due to security concerns:

“Siemens, which provides the IT backbone for the BBC’s email system, was asked to close the Blackberry network last week after a Creative Futures senior management awayday at which users compared emails and discovered they were receiving messages not intended for them. The decision left around 300 BBC executives and programme makers frantically checking their ‘sent’ folders to make sure they had not inadvertently betrayed any confidences or criticised colleagues. Insiders said that while some of the rogue emails were potentially embarrassing, there were no serious leaks.”