Category: technology

Is a Password Protected by the 5th Amendment?

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There is a general principal in US law, that one can be compelled to turn over physical evidence, but not the contents of one’s mind, as that is protected by the 5th amendment.

So, you can be compelled to turn over a key to a lock, but not a combination. There is a fairly long legal precedent.

This case asks what it means if the lock is unbreakable, or nearly so.

Case in brief: A Canadian, on crossing the US border, was told to show the contents of his hard drive, which he did, and some of the contents were deemed by the border guard to be likely child porn, though it’s unclear of this was simply random files in the cache, or Manga, or real kiddie porn.

The machine was confiscated, and subsequently turned off.

When it was restarted, its demanded a password, since the contents had been encrypted with PGP, and were inaccessible, and Magistrate Judge Jerome J. Niedermeier has ruled that compelling him to turn over his password violates the 5th amendment.

The prosecutors are appealing saying the standard stuff about terrorism, etc.

I’m with Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who has said, “The consequence of this decision being upheld is that the government would have to find other methods to get this information, but that’s as it should be. That’s what the Fifth Amendment is intended to protect.”

He’s right. If you hooked up this guy’s drive to a supercomputer, and ran it for a few months, and maybe less if you brought in some experts from the NSA, at the cost of a few million dollars, you’d probably crack the password, because even the best people don’t choose truly random passwords.

Inconvenient, yes, but inconvenience is not a basis for emasculating the Bill of Rights.

I generally oppose any granting any power to the government to either judge one based on the contents of one’s mind (hate crime laws), or to force revalation of the contents of one’s minds.

See In Child Porn Case, a Digital Dilemma.

Getting IP Right, and Trying to Avoid the “Oh, Canada” Cliche

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Harold Feld asks, “Someone tell me why Canadians seem to be so much smarter than we are, at least on the public policy fronts that I cover?”

The public policy fronts that he covers involve things like IP and network neutrality, and he is, in this case referring to the the Candian Radio-Television Commission‘s (CRTC) announcement that it is imposing new national ownership limits and cross ownership limits on its broadcast media, and the political backlash that has delayed a Canadian version of the DMCA.

The answer is actually far more depressing than the my friend Harold Feld, esq. would like to think: The Canadians believe in public policy, and the United States does not.

This is why someone like Michael Powell could make a statement that basically said that corporate profit was a public good, and not get tarred and feathered.

In Canada, his phone calls would not be returned.

Yeah, Right, “Recycled Tapes”, and the Dog Ate My Homework

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Yes, all those emails from the time of the Valeria Plame outing, reused and overwritten in a “consistent with industry best practices”.

Remember yesterday’s post on the lies of our times, this one needs to be added.

Not only are these clearly government records which require retention, but these tapes have been used in investigations going back to Iran-Contra.

They knew that this could be used as evidence, and they knew that it had been used as evidence, and they deliberately decided to destroy this evidence.

FCC Investigates Comcast Packet Blocking

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For what it’s worth, if Comcast finds it necessary to throttle some applications, they should be open about it to customers and prospective customers.

What happened here was that they were forging TCP reset packets to throttle the traffic, and then lying about it.

The problem is threefold, first, it interferes with non-Bit Torrent applications, I’ve read about it interfering with Lotus Notes, second, it makes troubleshooting problems with other applications very difficult, and third, the customer is being defrauded.

FWIW, traffic management, if necessary, should be based on bandwidth, which is what the ISPs sell, not application. It, or so I’ve been told, a trivial operation.

To quote Wetmachine: Harold Feld’s Tales of the Sausage Factory:

1) The FCC issued a public notice asking for comment on our Petition for Declaratory Ruling that Comcast’s “network management practice” of messing with BitTorrent uploads violated the FCC’s “Broadband Policy Statement,” which includes a principle that network operators may not block or degrade content or applications. In a separate public notice (but as part of the same proceeding), the FCC also seeks comment on the Vuze Petition for Rulemaking on how broadband access providers handle and shape IP traffic generally. (Copy of Vuze Petition here, copy of our Petition here).

2) Separately, the FCC issued a separate public notice seeking comment on a Petition filed by Public Knowledge and the usual suspects asking the FCC to declare that wireless carriers cannot deny short codes or block text messaging. This goes after Verizon’s high profile “oopsie” of denying a request by NARAL for a short code. Although, as we pointed out in the Petition, the more likely and pernicious problem is with plain old anticompetitive blocking, such as denying a short code to VOIP provider Rebtel.com and denying applications to major banks offering competing services.

3) Comcast confirmed that the FCC has lanched a formal inquiry into whether it violated the FCC’s broadband policy statement. Comcast reiterated that it will fully cooperate with the FCC, and expects any investigation to show that Comcast did not block content and has engaged in legitimate network management practices.

I think that the problem here is largely cultural. To paraphrase Lilly Tomlin from Laugh-In, who originally said this about the phone company, “We’re the cable company, we don’t have to care.”

That said, for the complex minutiae of how this is proceeding, and what it all means, go to the link. The process is confusing.

In particular, look at his, “How Do I File Comments?” section. If you want your voice heard.

Toshiba Trying to Sell HD-DVD Machines as Super DVD Players

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By virtue of the depth of the layer in the disk (0.6mm), HD-DVD players can play a standard DVD without an additional lense (Blu-Ray uses a 0.1mm depth with a super hard coating to protect it, which is why it’s more expensive), so standard DVD is pretty much standard on all HD-DVD players, and now Toshiba, following slashing the prices on their player, are attempting to sell their machine as a superior way to play standard DVDs.

“Major initiatives… are designed to spotlight the superior benefits of HD DVD as well as the benefits HD DVD brings to a consumer’s current DVD library by upconverting standard DVDs via the HDMI output to near high-def picture quality,” the company said.

“With DVD upconversion via the HDMI output, HD DVD players instantly make a movie lover’s existing DVD library look better than ever,” it claimed.

Assuming I was wrong in my prediction that HD-DVD would win the format battle, I would say that this was a death rattle, though this might be a good alternative for people with large DVD libraries and large HD screens.

Me, I’ve never been impressed by HD-TV. I only notice the difference on really big screens, or when they are side by side, so my interest is purely of a sporting variety.

Toshiba Cuts Prices on HD-DVD Players

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Some HD-DVD drives are now less than $100, and the newer ones are less than $200.

I don’t think that it’s going to make a whole bunch of difference, and that, to the degree that spinning optical media will be the future of movie distribution, it looks like Sony’s Blu-Ray has won (I got that one wrong).

On the other hand, if you want a deal, and HD-DVD handles existing DVDs quite well, you might want to go shopping.

New Ultra Capacitor Technology

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I read a report about Lockheed-Martin signing a contract with a company called EEstore to get exclusive rights to their ultra-capacitor technology in defense and homeland security applications.

I’ve done a bit of looking around, there is a Wiki Page, and if it does 1/10 of what they say it does, it’s impressive tech.

The advantages of Capacitors over batteries are:

  • Fast Charging
  • Fast Discharging
  • Basically never wear out.

The disadvantages are:

  • They can lose their stored energy over time, though this can be a long time, as anyone who has been knocked on their ass after opening up a junkyard TV can attest. (This tech is supposed to have self-discharge rate of 0.1% per month)
  • Low power density.

This technology looks very impressive:

These units use barium titanate coated with aluminum oxide and glass to achieve a level of capacitance claimed to be much higher than what is currently available in the market. The claimed energy density is 1.0 MJ/kg (existing commercial supercapacitors typically have an energy density of the order of 0.01 MJ/kg and a lithium ion battery has an energy density of 0.54–0.72 MJ/kg).

Maxwell technology has ultracapacitors on the market, and their website has peformance of 3.29 Wh/kg, or about .01MJ/KG.

Matthew Saroff’s Hall of Failed Predictions: Exhibit 38,745

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I was certain that, if there were a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars, it would be HD-DVD. ( here, here, here, here, here, and here)

It’s a cheaper tech, and it’s not controlled by Sony.

Well, the New York Times is now reporting that
NBC Universal and Paramount are seriously considering a switch to Blu-Ray.

I’m not wrong yet, but it seems likely that I will be in the next 12-18 months.

Then again, the end of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars has always seemed to be 12-18 months away.

Warner Brothers Drops HD-DVD

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Well, I made predictions on the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Generally, I’ve either bet against Sony, which is generally a safe bet, or against both, the theory that online distribution will render both formats redundant.

Given my previous record, perhaps you want to buy stock in Sony, because Warner Brothers just dropped HD-DVD as a format. They had been using both.

I stand by my predictions, but my record sucks.

Hack0rz to Penetrate 787 Systems in flight

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Well, it appears that one of Boeing’s innovations with the 787 is the ability to wirelessly access maintenance and control systems, and the FAA is demanding that there be more security on these systems.

The entire world of aviation is increasingly looking like the Pilot episode of
The Lone Gunman an X-Files spin off, in which the forces of fascism attempt to take over the computer systems of an airliner and fly it into the Twin Towers.

Heck, the entire world is beginning to seem like an episode of The Lone Gunman.

God is My Guide, With Exact GPS Coordinates

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Well, it appears that someone in Florida has devised a strategy to thwart baby Jesus stealers everywhere, they implanted a GPS tracker.

I expect this to be the beginning of a trend among Nativity scenes in the future.

The woman who oversees the annual display decided to put Global Positioning System trackers on the Jesus, Mary and Joseph figurines.

“I don’t anticipate this will ever happen again,” Dina Cellini said, “but we may need to rely on technology to save our savior.”

First, we lose ice pick murders, and now this.

It appears that technology has gone too far.

Netscape Browser to Die February 1

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As if it hadn’t really been dead for nearly 10 years now.

It was the first browser I used, and I now use Firefox, which is its bastard child, but I have no sorrow over this news.

While some of their problems were created by Microflaccid’s monopolistic practices, the fact that it was something like three years between Netscape 4.x and Netscape 6.x.

I’ll shed no tears, but instead send you to JWZ’s resignation letter from Netscape Communications.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio County to Switch to Optical-Scan

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I don’t generally buy into the conspiracy theories about touch screen voting, the group most involved in the issue in Maryland, TrueVote Maryland, is overrun by Greens determined to get nothing done, so that they can blame the Democrats.

I think that the machines are insecure, unreliable, and they don’t provide an adequite voting record, but the reason it’s good news that the Ohio county containing Cleveland is moving to optical scan is because I’ve used the touch screen machine, and they suck wet farts from dead pigeons.

They are buggy, the break down a lot, and they make for much longer lines, discouraging voting.

As to access for the blind, there are simple inexpensive solutions (basically a terminal with earphones and an integrated printer).

Adventures in Bad Desense Technology Reporting

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I’ve seen the story all over the net about successful Russian test launch of the RSM-54, or Sineva from the Tula, Delta IV class submarine earlier this month.

There was much talk about it was a “hybrid ballistic missile that in its final stages becomes a modified cruise missile” is actually a bit of a misnomer.

…., is a hybrid ballistic missile that in its final stages becomes a modified cruise missile. In this guise, the warhead cannot be targeted by anti-missile systems that rely on a ballistic trajectory for their calculations.

This is a misnomer. What we have is called a “MARV”, MAneuverable Reentry Vehicle, and it is fairly old news.

The Pershing II which actually reached deployment in the 1980s in Europe before being retired under the INF treaty had such a system, though not for ABM evasion, they coupled it with a terminal radar for a CEP under 30 meters.

For a strategic system it would likely be used for evasion, and there are reports of it being used on the Trident reentry vehicles.

You can see see the aerodynamic surfaces, and the radome on this picture of a Pershing II launch from Wiki.

Swedish Company Tests Hyper Velocity Missile

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It’s supposed to be able to achieve Mach 5.5 at sea level, that’s about 4200 miles per hour.


The article makes the suggestion that this might have been designed to be used with a multi transmitter anti-stealth radar system. Basically, you would target the missile on coordinates, and have no terminal guidance, so a shorter flight time would reduce error from the target changing course.

It would also be a potent anti-tank weapon, relying on kinetic energy for a kill, but it does appear to be a bit large for that application, as the 45 kg CKEM and 5 foot long(see picture below) can destroy any known armored vehicle.

The Saab-Bofors vehicle appears to be at least twice that size.

Shuttle Sensor Problem Existed for 26 Years and Could Cause Explosion

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It appears that the shuttle fleet is grounded until they can resolve the problem with the Hydrogen engine cutoff sensor. (Paid subscription required)

Basically, if there is a problem and the engine runs out of hydrogen before getting shut down

A cutoff is essential before hydrogen depletion to avoid cavitation in the 39,000-rpm. main engine high-pressure fuel pumps that would result in an explosion.

So this is a MAJOR problem.

But wait, there’s more:

The space shuttle fleet is grounded until technicians find and fix a vexing problem with engine cutoff (ECO) sensors—a component that NASA now realizes has likely never worked throughout the 26-year history of the shuttle program.

…..So why do we need an LH2 cutoff system? Simply put, if you need it and the LH2 tank runs dry with the engines at full power with LO2 still coming in, inevitably a catastrophe will occur. LOX-rich shutoffs are ugly in the extreme. This is a crit 1 situation. And it would occur so rapidly that human intervention is not practical.”

What’s going on here is that the shuttle is in the end of life phase, so the pressure to cover-up problems is decreasing, and so we are seeing long term potentially catastrophic loss of vehicle, crew, etc.

The Shuttle has been a pig since day one, and NASA has seen their job as covering up problems so that they can continue to play Captain Kirk.