Hasta La Gadget!

The US government has set up a new tumblr of declassified documents as part of attempts to reassure the public on what data the NSA and other agencies collect on them. The site, IC On The Record, aims to “declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive NSA programs while being […]

Remember our friendly white hat hacker, Khalil Shreateh, who got stiffed on his just reward after identifying a Facebook bug that let him post on Zuckerberg’s wall? Well, looks like the hacker community has no intention of letting their buddy’s bank account fall to the wayside. After setting up a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe, security researcher Marc Maiffret has successfully collected $10,000 in donations for Shreateh—a full 20 times more than Facebook’s withheld offering.

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There is an old Malay proverb that goes something like this after translation – no matter how high up a squirrel scurries, it will still fall down to the earth eventually. I guess that would be the most apt way of describing parking meter mechanic James Bagarozzo who has gotten away with approximately 10,000 pounds (in weight, not the British currency) worth of quarters when he was working as a parking meter mechanic in Buffalo, New York. Of course, when a thief gets careless, greedy, or both, that is more often than not the time when he gets caught.

Rewinding the clock all the way back to 2003, Bagarozzo as well as his accomplice Lawrence Charles actually rigged old machines that did not come with separate coin canisters to drop quarters into, allowing him to access them later, turning it into his personal piggy bank. So far, they have looted approximately $200,000 for themselves, which meant the city was deprived of at least that much revenue before their indiscretion was discovered. The parking commissioner realized that the newer, credit card-operated machines actually had a higher amount of revenue compared to the old school ones, leading to a further investigation before action was taken against the two suspects. Ever since the arrests were made, revenue actually leapfrogged by at least $500,000 annually. Crime does not pay, people! This just goes to show how technology, when implemented properly, will help make things more efficient and secure.

Mechanic Stole $210,000 From Rigged Parking Meters original content from Ubergizmo.

The question of how much contact the NSA has with internet traffic throughout the US is being raised again, this time by the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday The Atlantic took issue with the security agency’s mathematics and 1.6 percent claim, while the WSJ report looks more closely at its reach into telecommunications companies. The mishmash of codenamed programs are said to cover up to 75 percent of US internet traffic, although the amount actually stored and accessed is much smaller. The main difference between the calculations may be due to the difference between what ISPs — handing over data under FISA orders — carry, and what the NSA specifically requests. Its capabilities mean it can pull a lot more than just metadata, with access to the actual content of what’s sent back and forth becoming even more troubling as privacy violations exposed by its own audits come to light.

There’s an FAQ-style breakdown of what’s new and notable from the usual “current and former” officials to get those interested up to speed quickly — keep your tinfoil hats and end-to-end encrypted communications systems close by.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Wall Street Journal (1), (2)

The digital carnage continues as yet another online service shuts down rather than face NSA scrutiny. Fearing for its email security, the legal site Groklaw shut its doors on Tuesday, but not before offering a very valuable recommendation: An email service that’s out of reach of government goons.

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