UK hacker loses new round of US extradition fight Associated Press
British prosecutors said Thursday they would not bring criminal charges against a London man accused of hacking into U.S. military computers. The decision is a blow to Gary McKinnon’s attempts to avoid extradition to the United States. U.S. prosecutors allege that McKinnon, 42, broke into 97 computers belonging to NASA, the Department of Defense and several branches of the military soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. McKinnon says he was looking for evidence of UFOs. British and European courts have rejected repeated legal attempts by McKinnon’s lawyers to block his extradition. Last month McKinnon offered to plead guilty to a criminal charge in Britain to avoid facing trial in the United States.

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Obama proposes new wireless-spectrum fee  CNEt News

Faced with a whopping $1.7 trillion deficit, President Obama is proposing tacking on a spectrum license fee to wireless operators to help generate revenue for the government. The Obama administration’s proposal was loosely outlined in the new budget plan for 2009 and 2010 submitted Thursday. In that plan, the administration proposes adding a new fee to be paid by wireless carriers that license wireless spectrum from the government. These annual fees would start at $50 million in 2009 and jump to $200 million in 2010, Reuters reported. The fees will gradually increase over the next 10 years to $550 million per user per year, generating an estimated total of $4.8 billion over the next decade. The proposed fees are in addition to license fees that operators have already paid the federal government as part of its wireless auctions. The Federal Communications Commission has been auctioning off wireless spectrum to phone companies and other entities since the 1990s. These auctions grant license holders exclusive rights to the spectrum in exchange for cash.

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 Twitter users angry with Bell [the monitizER] Ottawa Citizen

Steep price tag for wireless customers who use service. Canadians who use Twitter are fuming at Bell Canada for bringing the messaging service to mobile phones but attaching a steep price tag to it. Three months after scrapping its mobile service in Canada, Twitter, a popular microblogging service, inked an exclusive deal with Bell to let its wireless customers “tweet” from their handsets using text messages. But it will cost users 15 cents per message sent or received – even if the user has an unlimited text-messaging plan. A spokesperson for Bell said Twitter is considered a “premium” third-party service, and so it’s not covered under text plans. [Comment: I can only laugh, LOL. Wonder how many suckers they will reel in with this monitization scheme]

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Phorm unleashes legal attack on critics The Register

Beware the wounded beast. News articles based on a survey indicating public opposition to Phorm’s web snooping and advertising system have been withdrawn after the firm made legal threats to their publishers. The independent consumer watchdog Which? sent a press release to newspapers earlier this week entitled “Internet users say: Don’t sell my surfing habits”. It detailed survey findings that UK internet users are opposed to plans by BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to monitor and profile their browsing in collaboration with Phorm.

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Two kids swapped for pet bird, $175 cash CNet News

A Louisiana woman is accused of trading two young children in her care for a pet cockatoo and US$175 cash from a couple who had been trying for years to have their own child, authorities said Thursday.

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Romanian hacker head hunted in jail The Inquirer

A ROMANIAN HACKER who stole cash from an Italian bank has become a star student at a local university and is being courted by several software security firms. Gabriel Bogdan Ionescu is currently doing three years and one month’s porridge in Bassone di Como for writing software to steal money from Poste Italiane’s accounts. The Italian press are a little concerned that software companies are lining up to hire the hacker when he gets out.  It seems that trying to rob a bank was the best career move he ever made.

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Linux Foundation ready to fight Microsoft if TomTom lawsuit involves Linux kernel ZDNet News

The Linux Foundation insists it is equipped to fight Microsoft if the software giant`s lawsuit against TomTom impacts the open source Linux kernel. In his blog, Executive Director Jim Zemlin advised concerned parties to calm down in light of statements by Microsoft`s deputy general counsel that it is targeting TomTom`s GPS mapping software and not Linux.

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Nurses fired for taking photos of patient’s x-rays (of his rectum, complete with lodged object) Boingboing

Two nurses in Wisconsin were fired after allegedly taking phonecam shots of a patient’s x-rays depicting a sex toy stuck in his rectum. One of the nurses is accused of then posting the photo she snapped to her Facebook page. From WISN.com: The patient was admitted to the emergency room with an object lodged in his rectum. Police said the nurse explained she and a co-worker snapped photos when they learned it was a sex device. Police said discussion about the incident was posted on her Facebook page, but they haven’t found anyone who actually saw the pictures.

February , 2009

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