Voter data security questioned – Toronto Star

The information the federal government has collected on Canada’s 23 million voters is open to identity theft and other serious breaches, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart reported today. “We’re concerned that voters’ personal information could fall into the wrong hands and be used for illegal activities,” she said following the release of 56-page report. According to the report, the RCMP in 2006 discovered lists of voter names and addresses at an office of a Tamil Tiger cell in Toronto. Canada has classified the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist group. Police found that Tamil names were highlighted so that the Tigers could try and contact them.

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Ticketmaster faces $250M lawsuit over fees Montreal Gazette

The $250 million lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Ontario Superior Court on behalf of plaintiffs from across the country, comes just days after a $500 million action on behalf of Ontario residents, alleging Ticketmaster conspired to direct event tickets from Ticketmaster’s lower priced portal in favour of its ticket brokering website, where tickets sell at premium prices. The second case takes on the separate issue of extra fees and surcharges charged by Ticketmaster when customers purchase tickets to events through its website. In addition to a “convenience” fee of up to $14 for a single ticket, Ticketmaster charges a “building facility” charge and an order processing fee.

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Cuba launches own Linux variant to counter U.S. Reuters

Cuba launched its own variant of the Linux computer operating system this week in the latest front of the communist island’s battle against what it views as U.S. hegemony. The Cuban variant, called Nova, was introduced at a Havana computer conference on “technological sovereignty” and is central to the Cuban government’s desire to replace the Microsoft software running most of the island’s computers. The government views the use of Microsoft systems, developed by U.S.-based Microsoft Corp, as a potential threat because it says U.S. security agencies have access to Microsoft codes. Apart from security concerns, free software better suits Cuba’s world view, he said. “The free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty.”

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German Interior minister’s website pwned [sic] in wiretap protest The Register

Lax password security allowed hackers to bust into the German interior minister`s website. Hacktivists pwned the website of Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday in protest against new wiretapping and data retention laws They posted links inviting visitors to a protest website “Vorratsdatenspeicherung”.

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69 computers missing from nuclear weapons lab ReadWriteWeb

The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 69 computers, including at least a dozen that were stolen last year, a lab spokesman said. No classified information has been lost, spokesman Kevin Roark said. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration that said 67 computers were missing, including 13 that were lost or stolen in past 12 months. Roark initially confirmed those figures, but later updated them. He said a total of 80 computers were lost or stolen in 2008, but 11 were recovered.

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Vodafone exec warns “We had to hand over data on people..” ZDnet

Vodafone’s global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, told a Westminster eForum event on Wednesday that following food riots at Egyptian government-subsidised bakeries in March 2008, the Egyptian authorities demanded communications data from Vodafone to help identify rioters. “We’ve had to hand over data on people in Egypt due to the food riots,” said Mullins. “Regulation can be a Trojan horse.” Vodafone is not the first service provider to be forced to hand over customer data. In 2005, Yahoo gave Chinese authorities details which helped in the arrest and conviction of journalist Shi Tao.

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Judge Seeks Further Briefing on Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity EFF

Today Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California federal court asked for further briefing on a key constitutional question in the litigations brought against AT&T and the other telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping.

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The iPhone Becomes a Web Server ReadWriteWeb

When those Apple advertisements tout “there’s an app for just about anything,” they aren’t kidding. The latest example? A new iPhone application which just debuted in Japan’s App Store transforms the handheld into a full-blown web server. Called “ServersMan@iPhone”, the application allows your iPhone to appear just like any other web server on the internet.

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Fugitive VOIP hacker cuffed in Mexico The Register

A fugitive hacker accused of illegally rerouting millions of dollars worth of VOIP calls through telecommuncations companies’ networks has been apprehended in Mexico. They were accused of carrying out a scheme that routed more than 10 million minutes of voice-over-internet-protocol calls over the networks of a dozen or so telecommunications providers without their permission. The suspects breached the networks by using brute force attacks that continually cycled through a large number of possible security telephone prefixes until the precise codes were determined. Because his scheme piggybacked off the resources of others, virtually all of Pena’s revenue was profit. That allowed him to sell long-distance calls for as low as four-tenths of a cent per minute.

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Pwn2Own hacker contest targets browsers, smart phones ZDnet

After two straight years of taking dead aim at Macbooks and Windows-powered machines, hackers at this year`s CanSecWest conference will have shiny new targets:  Web browsers and mobile phones. According to CanSecWest organisers, there will be two separate Pwn2Own competitions this year — one pitting hackers against IE8, Firefox 3 and Safari and another targeting Google Android, Apple iPhone, Nokia Symbian and Windows Mobile.

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Moonlight 1.0 is ready for download ZDnet

Moonlight, the open-source implementation of Microsoft`s Silverlight, has hit the 1.0 milestone. In a February 11 posting to his blog, ( http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Feb-11.html) Novell Developer Platform Vice President and Mono Founder Miguel de Icaza announced the news. Moonlight is available as a Firefox plugin that can be downloaded from the Moonlight download page. Moonlight works on Unix/Linux systems and PowerPC-based Macs.

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Adobe: Microsoft’s Silverlight ‘has really fizzled’ BetaNews

Addressing attendees at a tech-and-telecom conference on Tuesday, Adobe EVP and CFO Mark Garrett spoke of the challenges ahead. Microsoft’s software doesn’t appear to be one of them. Silverlight launched strong, said Garrett, but the push to adoption “has really fizzled out in the last 6-9 months, I’d say…We’re innovating ahead of them, and they have not been able to catch up.

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Netflix and Wal-Mart sued for ‘injuring’ consumers with DVD prices BetaNews

Hot on the heels of similar lawsuits against Netflix and Wal-Mart in other states, a new court action in West Virginia charges that the two companies colluded over dinner to drive DVD prices “artificially higher.” A newly filed suit by a West Virginia law firm alleges that Netflix and Wal-Mart have broken antitrust laws and caused “damage” to past and current Netflix customers in the US by divvying up various segments of the online and retail DVD market between themselves. Similar legal actions are reportedly also under way against Netflix and Wal-Mart in at least eight other states, including California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Arkansas. The suit in West Virginia contends that, during a dinner meeting in 2005, Netflix agreed to stay out of DVD sales if Wal-Mart in turn would refrain from online DVD rentals.

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Sirius XM prepares for file for bankruptcy Reuters

Satellite mogul Charles Ergen has offered to boost the capital and restructure the debt of Sirius XM Radio Inc, which has been preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing, newspapers reported. On its website, the New York Times cited people close to the company as saying Sirius has been working with advisors on a possible Chapter 11 filing, which could put pressure on satellite TV company EchoStar Corp, which is headed by Ergen and reportedly holds a substantial amount of Sirius XM debt.

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Russian and US satellites collide BBC

US and Russian communications satellites have collided in space in the first such reported mishap. A satellite owned by the US company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed nearly 780km (485 miles) over Siberia on Tuesday, Nasa said. The risk to the International Space Station and a shuttle launch planned for later this month is said to be low. The impact produced a massive cloud of debris, and the magnitude of the crash is not expected to be clear for weeks.

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“Guitar Hero” fails to save Activision Reuters

The economy is so bad that even the company behind “Guitar Hero,” the hottest video game franchise in the world, couldn’t muster a profit in the holiday quarter. Activision Blizzard on Wednesday posted a $72 million net loss in the fourth quarter, compared with an $86 million profit last year. It was the first full quarter for the company since its merger with Vivendi’s game unit, so the comparison isn’t perfect. [Comment: Must be all due to those p2p users]

Girl, 13, asked Russian President for pet guinea pig – Kremlin attacks the girl for the request Telegraph

A girl, 13, felt the wrath of the Kremlin for having the audacity to ask the Russian president on his website for a new pet, guinea pig. Perhaps forgetting it was actually pigs that George Orwell used to satirise Stalin’s Soviet state in his book Animal Farm,  local government officials told about the request went to the Nastya Ivliyeva’s school where she was called to the headmaster’s office and told off so badly that she burst into tears. They then condemned Nastya’s parents for allowing their child to try and waste President Dmitry Medvedev’s time on such petty matters. Nastya was forced to write a public letter retracting her request, newspaper Pik reported. [Comment: You too can Email the Russian president to let him know what you think (unless you're scared), click here: http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/articles/send_letter_Eng1a.shtml]

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Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash NPR
For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench. In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward. No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

February , 2009

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