Why I Hate the Police State

Why do I hate the idea of a police state? Because they will kill your fucking dogs. <a href="“>Every Day, No Days Off links to a video for a SWAT team raid where they bust down the door, storm in, and shoot the man’s dogs one of which was in it’s still in it’s fucking cage! Oh and what offense required such a forceful and zealous response? Possession of weed. Here’s the video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbwSwvUaRqc]

If that doesn’t infuriate you I don’t know what will. Oh and in the end the police charged the parents with endangering their children. It seems to me the SWAT team did a better job of that than the parents.

Dating Service for Zealots

This is one of those things that I laughed at, then rolled my eyes, and then realized it may be a good idea. Most Apple users are finicky people who have an almost religious love for Apple devices. Everything Apple makes it supposed to be great while everything else is complete and utter shit. One problem for these people is finding a mate in a world rules most by Windows is very difficult. Sure the first date goes well but then the Apple fan finds out the prospective mate uses Windows. Shortly after the Apple fan finds him or herself single again. Well good news there’s now a dating site for Apple users.

Maybe this will keep the Apple zealots rounded up in one place.

This is Why I Have a No Shortened URL Rule

One rule I have here is any comments containing a link that uses a URL shortening service gets removed, no questions asked. I do this because as Bruce Shcneier shows us those shortened URLs are a huge security risk. Cory Doctorow recently got screwed by a phishing attack via a good old URL shortened link:

I opened up my phone fired up my freshly reinstalled Twitter client and saw that I had a direct message from an old friend in Seattle, someone I know through fandom. The message read “Is this you????” and was followed by one of those ubiquitous shortened URLs that consist of a domain and a short code, like this: http://owl.ly/iuefuew.

Never click on a URL from a URL shortening service. You have no idea where they will lead you or what the page they link to will contain.

More Fun and Games from The TSA

Via Dvorak Uncensored we have this gem:

MAY 6–A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man’s genitalia after he walked through a security scanner. The May 4 confrontation involved Rolando Negrin, 44, and other TSA employees who had previously taken part in a training session at Miami International Airport, according to the below Miami-Dade Police Department reports. Negrin, pictured in the mug shot at right, and his co-workers had been training with new “whole body image” machines–the controversial kind that provide very revealing images of a traveler–when Negrin walked through the scanner.

But remember those TSA agents aren’t going to make such remarks about you just each other. Your privacy is perfectly safe.

More on Laptop Spying Case

I mentioned some time ago about a situation occurring where a school was caught spying on students via webcams built into laptops that were issued to students. Well apparently there is nothing to see here:

An “independent” investigation into the Lower Merion School District laptop scandal has concluded that there’s no evidence that students were being spied on. This is despite the existence of 58,000 photos surreptitiously taken of students on or around their computers and e-mails between district IT people commenting on the entertainment value of the photos. The 72-page report (PDF) from law firm Ballard Spahr claims, however, that most of the photos were not seen by anyone and that the district merely failed to implement proper record-keeping procedures.

Yeah obviously there was no spying. Sure they had 58,000 pictures of kids doing who-knows-what but most of the pictures weren’t actually seen by anybody, scouts promise. After all I’m sure the Ballard Spahr law firm has evidence proving none of the pictures were viewed:

Ballard Spahr admits that there is no way to determine how often the images were viewed, but says it found no evidence that the IT staff had viewed any of the images. Additionally, it says there was no evidence that district administrators knew how TheftTrack worked or even understood that large numbers of images were being collected in the first place.

Oops I guess not. Oh wait there was evidence… of the pictures being viewed:

This, of course, is the problem: because there was very little record-keeping going on and no official policies, there are few ways to know who knew what and when. However, claiming that there’s no evidence whatsoever that IT staff saw the images seems disingenuous, considering the fact that e-mail records were dug up last month that showed at least two IT administrators chatting about the photos. One staffer that has since been put on leave, Carol Cafiero, described the pictures as “a little [Lower Merion School District] soap opera,” while another staffer responded, “I know. I love it!”

Yes the school gave all the students laptops, installed spyware (in the most literal sense) on the machines, but didn’t really document it nor put any polices in place of when the cameras were to be used. That’s doesn’t scream trying to cover your tracks because you knew what you were doing was going to land you in very hot water.

But the fact of the matter is the school went to great lengths to ensure an outside party chose an independent entity to carry out the investigation so no possibility of bias could have entered into the equation:

One detail of note is that Ballard Spahr was hired by the Lower Merion School District itself to carry out the investigation, casting doubts on the true “independent” nature of the report.

Fuck me. I’m still hoping that school district gets sued right into oblivion.

I know quite a few parents who don’t want their kids having a laptop with a webcam because pedophiles may be able to access the camera without anybody’s knowledge and watching everything going on. I usually write such concerns off as over-the-top paranoia but I guess when the school is providing the laptops you should be worried about such things (the cameras being activated remotely without anybody’s knowledge, well and possibly the pedophiles doing it depending on the truth reason for installing that spyware).

My ultimate question here is who requested the installation of the spyware? Did the IT people do it without asking the school administrators or did the school administrators ask the IT people to do it? This will ultimately show the guilty party.

Not This Crap Again

Jay over at MArooned stumbled upon some major stupidity. Somebody is suing Starbucks because they dared to serve him hot tea:

According to the complaint, the plaintiff Zeynep Inanli was served tea that was “unreasonably hot, in containers which were not safe,” at a Starbucks store at 685 Third Avenue in Manhattan.

As a result of Starbucks’ negligence, the plaintiff suffered “great physical pain and mental anguish,” including the burns, the complaint said.

Of course they threw in the mental anguish. It’s easy to make millions when unspecified damages are thrown in. This would be a fine country if it wasn’t for all the fucking frivolous lawsuits.

Another Glock .22 Conversion Kit

Gun Nuts Media let us know there is another .22 conversion kit in the market. It has the following features according to the website:

* 15 round polymer magazine
* Last round hold open
* Fits the GLOCK® models 17, 22, 34 and 35
* Factory GLOCK® sights
* 1-16” Twist chome moly steel barrel
* 4140 Blued steel slide

It looks to compare favorably to the Advantage Arms kit I have. But the big difference is Advantage Arms is a California company and thus their magazines are restricted to 10 rounds, this new one doesn’t have that limitation. Unfortunately this new kit comes in at $350.00 to $410.00 making it quite a bit more expensive than Advantage Arms kit which comes in at $265.00 if you can find one (that being a HUGE if).

I don’t think a higher capacity magazine is worth an additional $85.00 myself. But I’m waiting with anticipation for reviews to see if anything else the new kit does is worth the additional cost.

Honduras Still Receiving Backlash for Enforcing Their Constititution

A while ago there was quite a stink over Honduras actually enforcing their Constitution and removing their then president from power. Well a lot of well respected neighboring states including Venezuela and our own government didn’t like the idea of a country actually obeying it’s own laws and threw up a stink.

Now they are threatening (promising?) to not attend the yearly European Union-Latin America summit if Honduras’s current president, Porfirio Lobo, attends. See they don’t recognize the legitimacy of Mr. Lobo’s seat because a potential dictator was removed lawfully to put Lobo in place. I love this:

An aide to Brazil’s President Lula, Marco Aurelio Garcia, said: “If Honduras attends, then at least 10 Latin American presidents will not go to Madrid, starting with the president of Brazil.”

I wonder what types of governments those 10 countries have. Probably something along the lines of what Venezuela has which is idealistically opposed to what the summit is apparently about:

But correspondents say its goals of development and democracy-building remain far off.

Yeah that’s not sounding like a threat so much as a promise.

Real Terrorist Prevention

Bruce Schneier once again points out how our government’s policies and methods for preventing terrorism are wrong. He wrote a recent article for the New York Times that describes what is being down incorrectly:

Think about the security measures commonly proposed. Cameras won’t help. They don’t prevent terrorist attacks, and their forensic value after the fact is minimal. In the Times Square case, surely there’s enough other evidence — the car’s identification number, the auto body shop the stolen license plates came from, the name of the fertilizer store — to identify the guy. We will almost certainly not need the camera footage. The images released so far, like the images in so many other terrorist attacks, may make for exciting television, but their value to law enforcement officers is limited.

Check points won’t help, either. You can’t check everybody and everything. There are too many people to check, and too many train stations, buses, theaters, department stores and other places where people congregate. Patrolling guards, bomb-sniffing dogs, chemical and biological weapons detectors: they all suffer from similar problems. In general, focusing on specific tactics or defending specific targets doesn’t make sense. They’re inflexible; possibly effective if you guess the plot correctly, but completely ineffective if you don’t. At best, the countermeasures just force the terrorists to make minor changes in their tactic and target.

Exactly. Our government agencies focus on specific threats and put in countermeasures for threats that have already been used. When somebody put explosives in their shoes TSA made you remove your shoes at their “security” checkpoints. When somebody tried using a liquid bomb on a plane TSA barred you from carrying bottled water on board (unless you purchased it at an exorbitant rate behind the “security” checkpoint). But bad guys are creative and think up new methods that avoid the implemented specific threat countermeasures.