It’s good to dream: IARPA’s five-year plan aims to design experiments that can measure trust with high certainty — a tricky proposition for a psychological study. Developing such experimental protocols could prove very useful for assessing levels of trust within one-on-one talks, or even during group interactions. A second part of the IARPA proposal might involve using new types of…  Read More →

Really: Since they are hard to conceal, the study says, noses would work well for identification in covert surveillance. The researchers say noses have been overlooked in the growing field of biometrics, studies into ways of identifying distinguishing traits in people. “Noses are prominent facial features and yet their use as a biometric has been largely unexplored,” said the University…  Read More →

Good legal paper on the limits of identity cards: Stephen Mason and Nick Bohm, “Identity and its Verification,” in Computer Law & Security Review, Volume 26, Number 1, Jan 2010. Those faced with the problem of how to verify a person’s identity would be well advised to ask themselves the question, ‘Identity with what?’ An enquirer equipped with the answer…  Read More →

Interesting commentary: I don’t think this is really a case about ISP liability at all. It is a case about the use of a person’s image, without their consent, that generates commercial value for someone else. That is the essence of the Italian law at issue in this case. It is also how the right of privacy was first established…  Read More →

The “Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook (U.S. Domestic Version)” (also can be found here, here, and here) outlines exactly what Microsoft will do upon police request. Here’s a good summary of what’s in it: The Global Criminal Compliance Handbook is a quasi-comprehensive explanatory document meant for law enforcement officials seeking access to Microsoft’s stored user information. It also…... 

Funny: MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Responding to recent public outcries over its handling of private data, search giant Google offered a wide-ranging and eerily well-informed apology to its millions of users Monday. “We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters. “Clearly there have been some…  Read More →

How not to destroy evidence: In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents, records show. The article wasn’t explicit about this — odd, as it’s the main question any reader would…  Read More →

Interesting paper: “A Practical Attack to De-Anonymize Social Network Users.” Abstract. Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Xing have been reporting exponential growth rates. These sites have millions of registered users, and they are interesting from a security and privacy point of view because they store large amounts of sensitive personal user data. In this paper, we introduce…  Read More →

Squid teapot. Could be squiddier….  Read More →

I gave this one two days ago, at the RSA Conference….  Read More →

The Spanish police arrested three people in connection with the 13-million-computer Mariposa botnet….  Read More →

On Tuesday, the White House published an unclassified summary of its Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI). Howard Schmidt made the announcement at the RSA Conference. These are the 12 initiatives in the plan: Initiative #1. Manage the Federal Enterprise Network as a single network enterprise with Trusted Internet. Initiative #2. Deploy an intrusion detection system of sensors across the Federal…  Read More →

Look at this new AES-encrypted USB memory stick. You enter the key directly into the stick via the keypad, thereby bypassing any eavesdropping software on the computer. The problem is that in order to get full 256-bit entropy in the key, you need to enter 77 decimal digits using the keypad. I can’t imagine anyone doing that; they’ll enter an…  Read More →

Nice essay. Similar sentiment from Newsweek….  Read More →

Nice essay. Similar sentiment from Newsweek….  Read More →